* * * * * March 20, 1912. A fine day for our show. To town on the nine o’clock trolley to help hang the pictures. Wm. Sargeant Kendall generous in lending several of his best canvases. The show proves amazingly good and is very well hung. The audience remarkably large for winter Newport. The lecture a little heavy, must lighten it with a few more laughs. * * * * * March 21, 1912. Harrison Morris writes me that he and Mrs. M. are for Roosevelt. I am thankful to find at last some one among my friends who feels as I do. The papers continue to slang him. The great, patient, silent army of men and women at the bottom of the ladder are silent. Will they be allowed to lift their voices and speak at the election? There is no doubt for me that we should elect T. R. unless all our delegates are “_inflooenced_” by fear, the trusts, and the sacred property-right idiots. Property isn’t sacred--only ideals. Much embarrassed to defend my views, as I am attacked by nearly every friend I possess. This doesn’t change my conviction that he is the man of the hour. He has a mind large enough to cope with the loosened floods of humanity that socialism and practical Christianity have partly freed from their frozen slavery. Taft is the mouthpiece of the rich class, Roosevelt is the tribune of the people. * * * * * March 31, 1912. Made a great effort to go to church, it being Palm Sunday. Ill rewarded. The minister made a most unchristian address. He began by analyzing Judas Iscariot, found that wounded pride was the cause of his downfall, and coupled with him Daniel Webster, Aaron Burr, and Theodore Roosevelt. A bitter, burning attack. I wept with anger and was on the point of rising and walking out of church to show my disapproval, when the thought that I was sitting in Mother’s seat and that she might not approve the action restrained me. After church I avoided speaking to the minister as I usually do. * * * * * April 17, 1912. To-day came the awful news of the sinking of the White Star Steamer _Titanic_. Even greater loss of life than when the _Ville du Havre_ sank some forty years ago. Little news yet, but apparently all the great ship’s company, save some six or eight hundred, went down in that icy polar sea. First reports say there are six hundred survivors on the _Carpathia_. The ominous words, “boats all accounted for”, mean no hope of other rescues. We have more than one acquaintance on board. It is believed that Frank Millet is among the survivors. Poor John Jacob Astor is apparently lost, his wife and her maid saved. The romance of the rescue is soul-stirring. No one thinks of anything else.