Taft was a candidate before the people. The reports that came indicated that he had lost his voice, and I was greatly concerned lest he might break down in his strenuous labours and new experience. The ups and downs of such a campaign, the prophecies, the hopes, the fears aroused by favourable and opposing newspapers were all new and trying to me, and in a way I think I was under as great a nervous strain as my husband was, without the steadying help of the hardest kind of work. However as the campaign drew near to a close, the Republican confidence grew stronger and stronger, so when we were assembled finally under the hospitable roof of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Taft, with a company of friends to receive the dispatches on election night, the news of the great success that came did not surprise us.