Poor man, most of his reputation, such as it then was, had been made in the Philippine service, but he replied to her:

“That’s right, I should go. And I’m going, too, just as soon as I can possibly get away.”

He meant that. He had promised the Filipinos that he would return to open their first Assembly, and even then he had a fixed desire to lead a party of American Congressmen to the country whose affairs they were endeavouring to settle by long distance legislation founded upon very mixed and, in some cases, greatly distorted, secondhand information.

Mr. Taft became Secretary of War at the beginning of 1904, but I spent the remainder of the winter after our arrival in the United States in Santa Barbara and did not join him until May, when I met him at St. Louis, where he went to open the Louisiana Purchase Exposition.