test old place in the world. Come and go with us; several of the
cabinet are going, and we shall have a rare time; come and go with us.
Have you ever seen the lovely country there?"

I answered, "No, I have not seen it; and, thanking you for the
invitation, shall not go; have too much to do. You will have a
vacation?"

"Yes," the President said, "and I am feeling like a schoolboy about
it. You should go. You were along with Harrison, Kirkwood, and me to
Chautauqua, you know. That was a great day's ride. Do you remember
those watermelons? They would have been first-rate if they had been on
ice a few hours."

"You had a hard day of it," I said; "forty speeches, weren't there?
And you will have another lot of speeches to make."

He said he did not mind the speeches.

"And how is your health," I asked; "any more indigestion? Ever try
Billy Florence's remedy, Valentine's meat juice, made in Richmond,
Virginia--great reputation abroad, little at home?"

He said he had never tried it, had forgotten it. Then, turning with an
air half comic, but with something of earnestness, he said, naming me
by way of start: "You have been holding a sort of autopsy over me ever
since I tumbled over at Atlantic City. I exposed myself there too long
both in the water and in the sun, but it was not so bad as you think."

I said he might pardon a degree of solicitude, under all the
circumstances, and he said he did not want any premature autopsies
held over him; and I put it that they had much better be premature.
Then the President said, with the greatest earnestness: "I am in
better health--indeed, quite well. It is curious, isn't it? My wife's
sickness cured me. I got so anxious about her I ceased to think about
myself. Both ends of the house were full of trouble. My wife's illness
was alarming, and I thought no more of the pit of my stomach and
the base of my brain and the top of my head; and when she was out of
danger, and my little troubles occurred to me--why, they were gone,
and I have not noticed them since. And so," said the President,
uttering the short words with deliberation, and picking them with
care, "and so, if one could, so to say, unself one's self, what a cure
all that would be!"

"The other end of the White House is better, is it not?" I asked.

"Not so much change there," said the President; "but one becomes
accustomed to heavy weather."

"Lord Roscoe is feeling happier, I hope," said I.

The President answered