I gave up my house in Cincinnati and stored my belongings, packing for shipment to the Orient only such things as I thought would be absolutely necessary. We were to leave almost immediately and I had very little time in which to do a great many things. Mr. Taft came back to Cincinnati for a short period and we entered upon a busy season of goodbye hospitality. Everybody we knew, and we knew nearly everybody, wanted to give us a farewell dinner or entertainment of some sort. Mr. Taft, especially, was fêted in a way which proved to him how much more widely he was valued in his native town than he had ever realised. In the opinions of people then we were going, sure enough, to the ends of the earth, and many of our friends were as mournful about it as if they had private foreknowledge that it was to be a fatal adventure.