My country home in the Mohawk Hills of New York State is many miles from Sagamore Hill on Long Island, and it was difficult to get telephone connection. My heart was unspeakably sore and heavy at the thought of the terrible sorrow that had come to my sister-in-law and my brother, and I shrank from asking any question concerning any matter except the sad news of the death of Quentin, or imminent danger to him. My brother himself came to the telephone; the sound of his voice was as if steel had entered into the tone. As years before he had written me from South Africa in my own great sorrow, he had “grasped the nettle.” I asked him whether he would like me to come down at once to Oyster Bay, and his answer was almost harsh in its rapidity: “Of course not--I will meet you in Saratoga as arranged. It is more than ever my duty to be there. You can come down to New York after the convention.” The very tone of his voice made me realize the agony in his heart, but duty was paramount. The affairs of his State, the affairs of the nation, needed his counsel, needed his self-control. His boy had paid the final price of duty; was he, the father who had taught that boy the ideal of service and sacrifice, to shrink in cowardly fashion at the crucial moment? The next day I met him in Albany and motored him to Saratoga. His face was set and grave, but he welcomed my sympathy generously. Meanwhile, the night before there had been great excitement in Saratoga. A number of delegates were in favor of renominating Governor Charles S. Whitman on the Republican ticket, but a large and important group of men, in fact, the largest and most important group in the Republican party of New York State, were extremely anxious that Colonel Roosevelt should allow his name to be brought forward as a candidate for governor. Elihu Root, William Howard Taft, and many of the weighty “bosses” of the various counties lent all their efforts toward this achievement. Colonel Roosevelt, on his arrival in Saratoga, took a quiet luncheon with my family, Mrs. Parsons, and myself, after which we adjourned to the large hall in which the convention was to be held. I remember before we left him that Mrs. Parsons suggested the insertion of a sentence in the speech which he was about to make, and his immediate and grateful response to the suggestion. No one had a more open mind to the helpful suggestion of others.