White House gossip : $b from Andrew Johnson to Calvin CoolidgeColman, Edna M. (Edna Mary)
History
White House gossip : $b from Andrew Johnson to Calvin Coolidge
Colman, Edna M. (Edna Mary)
Presidents -- United States -- Biography; Washington (D.C.) -- Social life and customs; White House (Washington, D.C.)
Gossip has put forth various versions of the romance of President
Coolidge and his wife. One of the stories given much repetition tells
that, when Mr. Coolidge called upon one occasion, he found Miss Grace
away from home. As her return was expected momentarily, he decided to
wait. In the course of his conversation with her father the young man
announced that he dropped in to say that he had concluded that Grace
and he were going to be married. When her father inquired what Grace
thought about it, Mr. Coolidge is reported to have replied that he “had
not spoken to her about it yet.”
Mr. Coolidge was twice mayor of Northampton, and in 1907 was a member
of the Massachusetts Legislature, going to the State Senate in 1912 and
serving until 1915, including two terms as president of that body. The
lieutenant governorship of the state came to him in 1916, and in 1918
he found himself elected Governor.
When he called the Massachusetts Senate to order in 1914, he made the
shortest speech of acceptance on record in the annals of that body. It
contained forty-two words and received state-wide attention and stamped
him as timber for further political service. This speech has been
regarded as a classic in Massachusetts statecraft, for it embodies the
Coolidge Creed--“Do the Day’s Work” and “Be Brief.”
In 1917, he was elected to the governorship by a majority of seventeen
thousand, but after the great Boston police strike, which gave
him national recognition, and out of which grew the slogan, “law
and order,” he was reëlected in 1919 by more than one hundred and
twenty-five thousand majority, the largest vote ever given a candidate
for that office in that state.
The gist of his platform in his gubernatorial race, in which he won
such a sweeping victory, was as follows:
“Do the day’s work. If it be to protect the rights of the weak,
whoever objects, do it. If it be to help a powerful corporation, do
that. Expect to be called a stand-patter, but don’t be a stand-patter.
Expect to be called a demagogue, but don’t be a demagogue. Don’t
hesitate to be as revolutionary as science. Don’t hesitate to be as
reactionary as the multiplication table. Don’t expect to build up
the weak by pulling down the strong. Don’t hurry to legislate. Give
administration a chance to catch up with legislation.”
People who insist that the President is cold, taciturn, devoid of
feeling and sentiment, have never seen him take from his pocket a slim
little silver case, which he always carries, and open it to gaze upon
the face of the mother who left him years ago.
The President and his wife are both of the Congregational faith and
regular attendants of the First Church in Washington.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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