Mr. Taft had never been subjected to bitter criticism and wholesale attack until his term in the Presidency and I suppose I had formed a habit of thinking that there was nothing to criticise him for except, perhaps, his unfortunate shortcoming of not knowing much and of caring less about the way the game of politics is played. Such criticism of him as Mr. Bryan’s supporters were able to create for their use in 1908 amounted to nothing. His record of twenty years’ uncriticised service stood, and he stood on it. I think we both avoided much perturbation after we became convinced of the unfairness and injustice of much that was said by hostile newspapers, by not reading it. Mr. Taft took much satisfaction from those words of Lincoln’s which Mr. Norton, his Secretary, had photographed and placed in a frame on his office desk: