In March 1908 the doctor advised me to send my wife north for a change, as she had lived too many years in a southern climate, so I sent her back to Guelph, Canada, where she was born. In October of the same year I got leave from the company, and went to bring the family back, my first holiday in four years. On my way up I stopped some hours in St. Louis, where I saw Taft, the president-elect, who was then on a stumping-tour, and was speaking in St. Louis. The country was election crazy, and all that men could talk about was the elections, and, as is always the case in America, election stories were on everybody’s lips. Two that I heard I will give here. A republican orator was holding forth in New York, and after his speech he said he would be glad to answer any arguments brought by the other side. After two or three men had made remarks and been answered, an old Irish-American got up and said, "Eight years ago they told us to vote for Bryan and that we would be prosperous. Oi did vote for Bryan, and Oi’ve niver been so prosperous in all my loife, so now, begory, Oi’m going to vote for Bryan again." For the benefit of those who do not understand American politics I may say that Bryan was the Democratic candidate who ran against Taft, and had run each time for the eight years previously and been beaten each time. The other story relates to a Democratic big gun who was to speak in a small Texas town where the people were mostly prohibitionists. He arrived on the speakers’ stand pretty intoxicated; not incapable of making his speech, but his unsteady walk and flushed face told the tale to the people, and the audience hissed and howled. He held up his hand for silence, and when it was restored he said, “Ladies and gentlemen, when a statesman of my prominence consents to appear in such a small one-horse town as this is, he must be either drunk or crazy. I prefer to be considered an inebriate.” When I arrived in Guelph, which I had not seen for nearly fourteen years, I found it wonderfully changed for the better, and as for the old college I should hardly have known it. Since I was there they had built, with money bestowed by Sir William C. Macdonald (the tobacco millionaire of Canada), a woman’s institute called the Macdonald Institute. Here young women are taught domestic science, which includes—elementary chemistry, and chemistry of foods, cooking, sanitation, household administration, laundry work, sewing, child-study, biology, bacteriology, home nursing, and emergency nursing. Then there are also many short courses, one teaching advanced sewing, which takes in dressmaking, millinery, embroidery, textiles, colour and design. After they have grasped all this they should be ready to marry and make good housewives.