Woodrow Wilson to Annie Wilson Howe

What a delight it was to get your letter! I am going to steal time enough to answer it on my own typewriter, as in the old days. I have to steal it. Even Sunday (this is Sunday) is not my own. I lead a desperate sort of life, not free from the demands of public business day or night, with no time for my own things, my own thoughts, or my own people. I have actually been so absorbed during the three and a half months Ellen and the dear girls have been in New Hampshire (a full half of the whole time that has elasped since I was inaugarated) that I have found the loneliness deadened and all but forgotten. It is as if the office swallowed up the individual life, whether you would or not, and used every nerve in you, leaving you only the time you were in bed, in the deep oblivion of utter fatigue. I am not complaining. It must perhaps be so; and I am not kicking against the pricks. I am only finding a way to tell you how I enjoy this indulgence of turning for a little while away from the whole thing to have a little talk with my dear sister. Did you know that Josie had given up his newspaper work in Nashiville and is now in Baltimore with a bonding company, a company that supplies official bonds for those who must give them in their business? It is the United States Fidelity and Guaranty Company. Its Baltimore office is on German Street. Alice has gone back to finish at the woman’s college, Belmont, in Nashville, and Josie and Kate are living at the old Albion Hotel on Cathedral Street. Josie seems to be more than meeting the expectations of his new employers and associates, and looks better than I have seen him look in some years. And I have the great pleasure of seeing him here once in a while when he comes over on business errands or to spend a Sunday.
Jessie’s wedding is to be on the twenty–fifth of November, as Ellen has probably written you before this, and we are now wrestling with the question who are to be invited, — no easy or safe question for folks in public life, where there are so many sensibilities to be considered! Jessie did fall off her horse, but the stories of the accident were grossly wrong. She was taking one of her first rides astride, and while the horse was in a gallup lost her stirrups and slid off. She says she remembers merely having a half–amused feeling that she was slipping off and then she lost consciousness. Frank was just at hand, and so was the river. He quickly brought her back to consciousness with a little water on her face, took her to a nearby farmhouse, got a doctor who was passing to stop and look her over, and then brought her home. A few bruises were the net result. She had fallen on soft grass at the side of the road. The only conspicuous mark was a blacked eye, which she carried around for a couple of weeks under her veil.
Ellen wrote me a week or so ago saying that she was about to send you the thousand dollars in checques, — American Express checques, I believe she said, — so you need not worry about that. There will be no such impediment as there was about a letter from the Princeton Bank. I hope they will reach you in good season.
The introduction to Mr. Dawson is all right, of course. I have not seen him yet. I do not know whether he has been in Washington since you gave it him or not. Sometimes people seek me out and are headed off in the office without my knowing anything about it; but I am quite sure they would not treat anyone that way who brought a letter from you. I shall try to be nice to him when he comes. I say “try” because some days it is literally impossible for me to see anyone, outside the official visitors and conferees of the day. I hope it will not be so when he turns up.
It was good, so good to have news of you at first hand. Ellen had told me of her letter from you, too. We are all well. I have stood the extraordinary strain of the summer surprisingly well. There have been times, of course, when I have felt terribly fagged, and almost down and out, but I have come out of them at once all fit again. I am beginning to think that I am rather a tough customer, after all, physically, if not otherwise! It is good to hear that you and Annie and the baby are all right! I suppose Josephine is beginning to talk French, rather than English, isn’t she? I should like to hear it, whether I understood it or not.
I am sure all the dear ones would join me in deep love, if they were here. They will be here, God be praised, by the end of the week.