d at your being chosen captain of the Seventh. I
had not expected it. I rather suspect that you will be behind in your
studies this month. If so, try to make up next month, and keep above
the middle of the class if you can. I am interested in what you tell me
about the Sir Galahads, and I shall want to talk to you about them when
you come on.

Mother is back with Aunt Emily, who looks very well. It is so nice to
have her. As for Mother, of course she makes the house feel like a home
again, instead of like a temporary dwelling.

Leo is as cunning as ever. Pinckney went to see Allan yesterday and said
he found him "as busy as a bee in a tar barrel," and evidently owning
all the trainer's house. He is not yet quite fit to come back here.

To-day is Quentin's birthday. He has a cold, so he had his birthday
cake, with the six candles, and his birthday ice-cream, in the nursery,
with Ethel, Archie, Mother, Aunt Emily, myself, Mame and Georgette as
admiring guests and onlookers.

A PRESIDENT'S POOR PROTECTION

White House, Nov. 28, 1903.

DEAR KERMIT:

It was very sad at Uncle Gracie's funeral; and yet lovely, too, in a
way, for not only all his old friends had turned out, but all of the
people connected with the institutions for which he had worked during
so many years also came. There were a good many of the older boys
and employees from the Newsboys' Lodging House and the Orthopaedic
Dispensary, etc. Uncle Jimmy possessed a singularly loving and
affectionate nature, and I never knew any one who in doing good was more
careful to do it unostentatiously. I had no idea how much he had done.
Mother with her usual thoughtfulness had kept him steadily in mind while
I have been Governor and President; and I now find that he appreciated
her so much, her constant remembrances in having him on to visit us on
different occasions. It was a lesson to me, for I should probably never
have thought of it myself; and of course when one does not do what one
ought to, the excuse that one erred from thoughtlessness instead of
wrong purpose is of small avail.

The police arrangements at the church were exasperating to a degree.
There were fully five hundred policemen in the streets round about, just
as if there was danger of an attack by a ferocious mob; and yet though
they had throngs of policemen inside, too, an elderly and harmless crank
actually got inside with them to present me some foolish memorial about
curing the German Emp