Sinton’s death in 1901, as the Taft house. It is the only Taft house in Cincinnati now, the house where my husband was born having been sold after his father’s death, and it has been the scene of many of the most important events of my life. It was there that my husband received the announcement of his nomination for the Presidency; it was there, in front of the house, that he made his speech of acceptance; and it was there that Charles Taft gathered a large party of friends on the night of November 6, 1908, to receive with us the election returns. And it is now to this house, where my husband’s brother Charles and his wife dispense a generous hospitality, that we always go when we return to Cincinnati.

My girlhood days were spent quite placidly in Miss Nourse’s school, which was known in Cincinnati as “The Nursery,” and where all the girls of the Herron family, as well as Mr. Taft’s only sister, Fanny, received their education. Miss Nourse was a Maine woman with a thorough New England education and with a thoroughly New England idea of imparting it. She insisted, especially, upon languages and literature. Much of my time, outside of that taken up in regular school work, I devoted to the study of music, and I practised my scales on the family piano with such persistence that I wonder the whole neighbourhood did not rebel. Music was the absorbing interest of my life in those days, the inspiration of all my dreams and ambitions.