Just about the break of day on Wednesday morning, as David Lawrence, Ames Brown, and my son Joe, were seated in my office, a room which overlooked a wide expanse of the Atlantic Ocean, we were notified by Democratic headquarters of the first big drift toward Wilson. Ohio, which in the early evening had been claimed by the Republicans, had turned to Wilson by an approximate majority of sixty thousand; Kansas followed; Utah was leaning toward him; North Dakota and South Dakota inclining the same way. The Wilson tide began to rise appreciably from that time on, until state after state from the West came into the Wilson column. At five o'clock in the morning the New York Times and the New York World recanted and were now saying that the election of Mr. Hughes was doubtful. Without sleep and without food, those of us at the Executive offices kept close to the telephone wire. We never left the job for a minute. The last message from the mysterious stranger came about one o'clock, the day following the election, when he 'phoned me that, "George Perkins is now at Republican headquarters and is telephoning Roosevelt and will soon leave to inform Roosevelt that, to use his own words, 'the jig is up,' and that Wilson is elected." Shortly after, from Republican headquarters came a bulletin saying: "George Perkins is on his way to confer with Mr. Roosevelt." Some months after the election the mysterious stranger came to the White House offices, and without identifying himself, informed me that he was the individual who on the night of the election had kept me in touch with Republican headquarters, and then astounded me by telling me that in some mysterious way, which he did not disclose, he had succeeded in breaking in on the Republican National Committee wire and had listened in on every conversation that had passed between Willcox, Hughes, George Perkins, Harvey, and Theodore Roosevelt himself during the night of the election and the day following. Mr. Wilson arose the morning after the election, confident that he had been defeated. He went about his tasks in the usual way. The first news that he received that there had been a turn in the tide came from his daughter, Margaret, who knocked on the door of the bathroom while the President was shaving and told him of the "Extra" of the New York Times, saying that the election was in doubt, with indications of a Wilson victory. The President thought that his daughter was playing a practical joke on him and told her to "tell that to the Marines," and went on about his shaving.