Mr. Taft’s mother, though more formal, was also very kindly and made my visit to her home as a bride full of pleasure. The two, the father and mother, had created a family atmosphere in which the children breathed in the highest ideals, and were stimulated to sustained and strenuous intellectual and moral effort in order to conform to the family standard. There was marked serenity in the circle of which Judge and Mrs. Taft were the heads. They had an abiding confidence in the future of their children which strongly influenced the latter to justify it. They both had strong minds, intellectual tastes, wide culture and catholic sympathies.

Not long after we arrived my husband came to me one day with an air of great seriousness, not to say of conciliation and said: