Woodrow Wilson to Mary Allen Hulbert Peck

I wonder if the long interval since your last letter means that you are worse or that you do not recover your strength as rapidly as you expected? I try to reassure myself. I try to reason that if you were worse Allen would have let me know or that some one would have sent me a message, but I do not wholly succeed. I catch myself worrying about you, and am often full of uneasiness. And yet I know that this is unreasonable. I will not assume anything of the kind — I cannot work as I should when I do, — for I know, among other things that reassure me, how thoughtful you are and how sure you would be to let em know of anything that seemed serious. I had set my heart, you see, on having this summer, spent quietly in Nantucket, quite set you up again, and bring back all your old spring and vivacity, if only by virtue of the mere rest and refreshment (physical refreshment) you were getting out of the winds and the influences of the ocean and all the things you love so much in Nature that are about you. It would go hard with me to be disappointed. Please write to me presently and tell me exactly how you fare and what you are projecting for yourself when autumn and winter come on.
I spent last Saturday, Sunday, and Monday (Labour Day) at Cornish, and it did me a lot of good to get a few days of freedom from the atmosphere (the figurative article) of Washington; but not so much as if I had had a clear conscience. The fact must be admitted that I cannot have a clear conscience away from Washington so long as Congress is sitting. It’s tough to have your conscience in one place and your heart in another; but when that unhappy situation arises the only safe thing is to stay doggedly where your conscience is: for that, after all, is the master of your happiness. And so I came back, in spite of being urged by indulgent associates here to stay away for a week. Week ends are all I can hope for, — and precious few of them!Every now and again, just to keep my hand in and feel natural, I break a precedent. I broke one to day, feeling a little stale and dull. I went to church in a white linen suit. It was simply so hot that I could not stand any other kind. I created a mild sensation as I entered the church, as I could see by the way the people looked at me; but that of course is what every public man wishes to do, at church or anywhere else, and it did not in the least interfere with my own state of mind during the service. After the first five minutes I lost the self–consciousness I had felt on entering. Is there anything more hateful or more unhandsome and ridiculous than self–consciousness? I would rather have the small pox. It is as fatal to any genuine action as any kind of disease is to acting at all! We are immensely pleased with our little church here. It is so simple and old–fashioned. And the people in it are so genuine and fundamentally self–respecting. We never have had there the sense of being stared at or made capital of for the benefit of the congregation. If I could only go without having a secret service man sit right behind me, and half a dozen secret service men wait about the church while I am in it! What fun it will be some day to escape from arrest!I am perfectly well, and public affairs go very well, — as well as could be expected, and much better than those who do not like the party would like to see them go. And there are compensations even to official life here. To–day, for example, we (Dr. Grayson and I; he and I and Tumulty keep bachelors hall together, but on Sundays T. runs away to be with his little family on the Jersey shore) had a most delightful man to lunch with us whom I would not have had the pleasure of knowing had he not wished to meet the President, namely the Lord Provost of Glasgow, a Mr. Stevenson, who proved to be full of the kind of things that make the mind of a cultivated x & gifted Scotsman one of the most delightful companions of the modern world (since I never belonged to any other). I had him in as a matter of duty, and duty graciously put on the aspect of pleasure the moment he began to talk. There are these incidental and occasional rewards, to keep a fellow from going stale or turning grim and dull and being deadened by it all. How it would brighten everything if some day the friend who has been so much to me might happen this way! But the fairies are not so kind as that.