The Box, Contoocook, New Hampshire. March 1, 1911. Being rather run down, came up with Isabel Anderson to breathe the elixir of this New Hampshire air instead of going, as some friends advised, to the South. Davos cannot be more exhilarating than Contoocook. Went for a four-mile tramp. The walking good, the snow crisp and hard enough to bear. Saw hardly a person moving. The loneliness is appalling. No children, no young people coasting or frolicking! Farm after farm silent and lifeless; had it not been for the smoke from the chimneys they might be abandoned, like those farms I saw in Maine a few years ago. These eight days have built me up wonderfully. The wide waste of the snow world outside, lonely and wild as the Russian steppes, with the contrast of the cozy interior of the Box where not a crumpled rose-leaf hurts, is piquant enough. Isabel is in her loveliest mood. We went over a story of hers and she sketched in a children’s play that seems to have real possibilities for a merry Christmas frolic. Some of the pictures of this visit will remain with me long: Isabel with her white fox furs leading me for a tramp through the snow. J. and Isabel warming the butterflies to life before the mammoth fireplace up at the bungalow, where the fire of white birch logs roared on the hearth bringing out the perfume of the green balsam branches that covered the roof. Outside the wide circle of hills topped by distant Mt. Kearsarge seen through the thick veil of a violent snowstorm--the bare brown and purple hills with the frozen lake at their feet--what a panorama! Why, O why, do we have to go to Switzerland when we have New Hampshire? * * * * * Washington. January 23, 1912. Talked with Count Von Bernstorff, the German Ambassador. He said, _à propos_ of Mr. Roosevelt’s possible election: “Every body seems to want him, but we in Washington are so faithful to the Administration.” * * * * * January 27, 1912. Lydia Loudon’s dinner for me. Thomas Nelson Page, Senator Newlands and Edith, Miss Mabel Boardman. The talk was largely political, the general drift, of course, towards the absorbing subject, “Taft or Roosevelt”? Miss Boardman reported that Mr. Taft had said, “I can never forget what Roosevelt has done for me, but his conduct has seared my soul.” John Loudon’s summing up is the wisest I have heard: “Roosevelt is really a great man; it seems a pity not to use him while you have him.” Page read aloud one of his funny darky dialect stories. I read two of Mother’s poems. The Loudons sang charmingly and Edith Newlands played beautifully, a feast for which the peerless Dutch coffee and cordial fortified us.