Boston, March 22, 1912.
Personal
Dear Rhodes;-
Glad as I wasto receive your letter of
March 3rd, I
wish it had not arrived before I had succeeded in sending you the
account of the Roosevelt visit which
I promised. I began it in
rough draft almost immediately, but there was so much to say and
I have been so pressed with work that the days have sped without
my finishing it, though the first three pages are lying on my desk.
Now I am going to make a fresh start and have sought my favorite
nook in the roof of the Athenaeum for the purpose. We look out
this morning on a landscape of snow, and the blue
Charles,- for the
ice has gone – with the snow capped back-ground suggest
Cannes and
the
Riviera.
T. R’s visit to me was arranged
January 23rd, when he wrote
asking if it would be convenient for me to put him up for the night
of
February 25th (Sunday) as he was coming on for
the Porcellian
dinner (Saturday) and subsequent Overseer meeting (Wednesday).
He had a standing invitation to stay with me whenever he came on
to the Overseer meetings.
You have already heard of the letter from the eight Governors
and of the Columbus speech. He told me after his arrival that he
had purposely left an interval between that speech and his
announce-
ment of willingness to accept the nomination so as to give any
of the Governors who found the Columbus speech too radical any
opportunity to withdraw – like for instance Bass of
N. H., who
was an Eastern man.
Brandegee had him in charge at Brookline until Sunday after-