The only incident of my girlhood which was in any way unusual was my first visit to the White House as a guest of President and Mrs. Hayes. Mr. and Mrs. Hayes and my father and mother had been lifelong friends. Mr. Hayes was, at one time, a partner in my father’s law firm. They had been closely associated for a great many years and had a very warm regard for each other. My youngest sister was born shortly after the election of Mr. Hayes, was named Lucy Hayes Herron, after Mrs. Hayes, and was taken to the White House to be christened. My mother paid several visits to the White House and after my sister Jennie was married Mrs. Hayes invited her and Mr.

Anderson to stay a week with her and, to my intense excitement, she added that she would like to have me accompany them. I was seventeen years old; I had never been to Washington and to me it was a very important event. I was not “out,” so I couldn’t spend my time in the White House as I would have liked, in going to brilliant parties and meeting all manner of charming people, but, fortunately for my peace of mind, the Hayes lived very quietly, so it was not so trying to have to devote myself to seeing the sights of the Capital like any other tourist.

I didn’t meet my husband until I was eighteen years old. We had been born and brought up in the same town; our fathers were warm friends and had practised law at the same bar for more than forty years; during that time our mothers had exchanged visits, and my sister Maria and Fanny Taft were schoolmates and close companions at Miss Nourse’s, but the Tafts lived at Mt. Auburn, a hill suburb of Cincinnati, and after Will finished Woodward High School he went for four years to Yale, so it is not at all surprising that we did not meet.