n
from the petty excitements of reforming the world and dreaming of a
diseaseless earth in New York, or from the stump-pulling recreation
of a North Carolina wilderness.

Health be with you!

W.H.P.

To Edwin A. Alderman

Garden City, L.I.

March 10, 1913.

MY DEAR ED ALDERMAN:

I'm home from a month of perfect climate in the sandhills of North
Carolina, where I am preparing a farm and building a home at least
for winter use; and I had the most instructive and interesting
month of my life there. I believe I see, even in my life-time, the
coming of a kind of man and a kind of life that shall come pretty
near to being the model American citizen and the model American way
to live. Half of it is climate; a fourth of it occupation; the
other fourth, companionship. And the climate (with what it does) is
three fourths companionship.

Then I came to Washington and saw Wilson made President--a very
impressive experience indeed. The future--God knows; but I believe
in Wilson very thoroughly. Men fool him yet. Men fool us all. He
has already made some mistakes. But he's sound. And, if we have
moral courage enough to beat back the grafters, little and big--I
mean if we, the people, will vote two years and four years hence,
to keep them back, I think that we shall now really work toward a
democratic government. I have a stronger confidence in government
now as an instrument of human progress than I have ever had before.
And I find it an exhilarating and exciting experience.

I have seen many of your good friends in North Carolina, Virginia,
and Washington. How we all do love you, old man! Don't forget that,
in your successful fight. And, with my affectionate greetings to
Mrs. Alderman, ask her to send me the news of your progress.

Always affectionately yours,

WALTER H. PAGE.

_To Edwin A. Alderman_

On the _Baltic_, New York to Liverpool,

May 19, 1913.

MY DEAR ED ALDERMAN:

It was the best kind of news I heard of you during my last weeks at
home--every day of which I wished to go to Briarcliff to see you.
At a distance, it seems absurd to say that it was impossible to go.
But it was. I set down five different days in my calendar for this
use; and somehow every one of them was taken. Two were take