* * * * * October 22, 1912. This day Winston Churchill came to speak for our Rhode Island League. We took “Churchill House”, a very elegant sort of a Club, and sold tickets at one dollar. A good audience about one half hostile to the cause, and interested only in hearing Churchill, the famous novelist. Professor Courtney Langdon of Brown University introduced Mr. Churchill who spoke for more than an hour, sanely, lucidly, and temperately. He told of his fight with the Boston and Maine Railroad in New Hampshire. We had worked very hard for this meeting and were thankful we came out of it so well. All expenses were paid and one hundred dollars clear profit. In the evening there came to our headquarters William Gillette, who made one of the great addresses of the campaign. The actor’s art, the reformer’s faith, and the Progressive’s fire made a combination not often met. This was a red-letter day full of high words and higher thoughts. The headquarters are grand and in full swing, with constant meetings and great enthusiasm. No time has been lost. To dine with Dr. and Mrs. Terry. Large dinner, talk chiefly political. I had rather a disagreeable set-to with Professor ---- who spoke insultingly of “Roosevelt and the rabble that follows him”, knowing quite well that I was one of the “rabble.” A few days since I dictated to a reporter an article giving the reasons why we all owe a debt to Greece, and how we are morally bound to work for the Greeks in their efforts for complete national independence. Never saw the article but fancy it was not bad, for I get letters from Greeks every day, thanking me for what I said. To Boston and to Mrs. Kehew’s to speak for the Progressives. A fine old house on Chestnut Street that used to be called the Bayley house and later belonged to Edwin Booth. Full of tender childhood memories for me of our own Chestnut Street days when I was discovered one morning with the largest nail brush in the family, scrubbing the white marble statue of a nymph in the garden that I greatly admired and thought in need of a spring cleaning. I had a splendid audience and was supposed to try and break the solid front of the Back Bay Roosevelt had warned me of. Fear I didn’t succeed. The audience was about half and half, for and against us; the “fors” applauded furiously, the faces of the “againsts” were grim and set! After the meeting, to Walpole with Mrs. Bird and then to Watertown, where I spoke for an hour, holding the rally till Arthur Hill and the other speakers should arrive. I find it hard to give two first-rate speeches of over an hour in one day, but they all say I am learning fast. * * * * *