* * * * * February 1, 1912. A letter from Mr. Roosevelt asking me to come to see him. I found him in the outer office of the _Outlook_. The place was filled with reporters and others waiting to see him. I caught a glimpse of T. R. talking with a fat blond-bearded German. I asked one of the clerks who he was; he said “an artist”, as if that were an answer. Finally T. R.’s secretary took in my card. T. R. came out and shook hands with me; his first words were: “I could no more have come to lunch with you than I could have flown”; then told them to take me to his private office, a suite of three rooms all filled with men. I was shown into the outer room where there were the fewest. A gentleman of his own sort was reading a book of poems; I think it was one of the classics. T. R. had given me a copy of the _Outlook_ published that day containing a long article of his on Woman Suffrage with many tributes to Mother. When he came in, I thanked him for the article. “You know that neither my own mother nor my wife is in favor of suffrage,” he said; “I believe your mother more than any one else converted me to it.” “To her it was not so much a question of right as of duty,” I reminded him. “That is just what I am trying to teach them,” was his answer. Then I cried out, “Come back to us, come back to us!” “But Massachusetts doesn’t seem to want me back,” he protested; “or, at least, the Back Bay does not.” “I find that the people who love you best say, Wait till 1916, but the people who love the country best say, Now, now, now!” I said. “That’s just it,” he flashed out, “the time to set a setting hen is when she wants to set!” He looks a little older and stouter, but his perfectly tremendous personality impresses one more than ever. He is more like the Corliss engine than anything else! * * * * * February 27, 1912. Yesterday Roosevelt announced that he would accept the nomination for President if offered to him. He is staying at the Brandegees’ in Brookline, and spent the day with Robert Grant. Matsu (a highly educated Japanese servant) says he is like Napoleon and is turning from his greater to his lesser self. I do not see it so, but many people do. I feel Loudon was right. When you have a man of genius it seems a pity not to use him. * * * * * Newport, March 17, 1912. Worked on my paper, “Artists’ Life in Rome”, for the Current Topics Club. I tried to give three vivid pictures,--Ancient Rome, the Renaissance, Modern Rome. * * * * * March 19, 1912. Much telephoning about the pictures for the little show to be held in connection with my lecture.