“Viewed in this light, some wives are superior to their husbands, some husbands to their wives, some girls to their brothers, and women to men in varying circumstances. Education for women, as much as is obtainable, possesses, to my mind, far greater advantages than the commercial one of providing means for making a livelihood. This is a very great benefit, when necessary, but for the aggregate woman the highest mission is the ability to preside over a home and to fulfil the highest obligations of a home with grace, dignity, and an exalted sense of duty.” Few of the women called to preside as First Lady of the Land had the liberal equipment through birth, education, travel, social and official prestige which has been Mrs. Taft’s, and the reforms she established were of a character to call forth high praise. As a part of her plan to create a real home for her family while administering the social régime of the Mansion, she introduced a Jersey cow to the establishment, to the greatest interest and amusement of the tourists who stopped to watch bossy peacefully grazing about the grounds, undisturbed by any other animal or pet. Every step in the career of the genial President, from his birth to his service on the bench as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, is well known, but the career of his talented wife, to whom so much of his own success is due, is familiar but to a limited circle, since her life has been submerged in his, and her objective the promotion of his welfare. Mrs. Taft, the daughter of John W. Herron of Cincinnati, one-time law partner of Rutherford B. Hayes, had every social and educational advantage from earliest childhood. As a girl visiting “Aunt Lucy Hayes,” she is credited with having declared her intention of becoming mistress of the White House some day. “I shall never forget the joy of those visits,” Mrs. Taft has said. “There was a supper served at eleven or twelve o’clock every evening in the main corridor and laughing companies of young people used to gather ’round that table.” Nellie Herron was still a schoolgirl at that time, but no one welcomed her home from these delightful visits more heartily than the jolly big boy she had known from babyhood, the son of her father’s lifetime friend, Judge Alphonso Taft, and when he went away to Yale, his brightest memory was woven around the frolics, dances, and good times with this talented young girl.