Forty-five years intervened. I had heard of her from time to time wandering aimlessly over Europe, but had not met her until the preceding winter in a famous Southern homestead. There she led me into a rose garden, and seated beneath its clustered greeneries she said with an air of triumph, “Now you see, my dear old friend, that I was right and you were wrong all the time.” Startled, and altogether forgetful, I asked in what way. “Why,” she answered, “at last the South is coming to its own.” Still out of rapport with her thought I said something about the obliteration of sectionalism and the arrival of political freedom and general prosperity. She would none of this. [Illustration: Henry Watterson (Photograph taken in Florida)] “I mean,” she abruptly interposed, “that the son of Martha Bullock has come to his own and he will rescue us from the mudsills of the North.” She spoke as if our former discussions had been but yesterday. Then I gave her the right of way, interjecting a query now and then to give emphasis to her theme, while she unfolded the plan which seemed to her so simple and easy; God’s own will; the national destiny, first a third term, and then life tenure à la Louis Napoleone for Theodore Roosevelt, the son of Martha Bullock, the nephew of our great admiral, who was to redress all the wrongs of the South and bring the Yankees to their just deserts at last. “If,” I ended my sketch, “out of the mouths of babes and sucklings, why not out of the brain of this crazed old woman of the South?” Early in the following April I came from my winter home in Florida to the national capital, and the next day was called by the President to the White House. “The first thing I want to ask,” said he, “is whether that old woman was a real person or a figment of your imagination?” “She was a figment of my imagination,” I answered, “but you put her out of business with a single punch. Why didn’t you hold back your statement a bit? If you had done so there was room for lots of sport ahead.” He was in no mood for joking. “Henry Watterson,” he said, “I want to talk to you seriously about this third-term business. I will not deny that I have thought of the thing—thought of it a great deal.” Then he proceeded to relate from his point of view the state of the country and the immediate situation. He spoke without reserve of his relations to the nearest associated public men, of what were and what were not his personal and party obligations, his attitude toward the political questions of the moment, and ended by saying, “What do you make of all this?”