# The President's Daughter (Britton)/Chapter 144

In a letter received by me from Daisy Harding (Mrs. Lewis), under date of October 20th, a post office order in the amount of $110 was enclosed. Miss Harding wrote in this letter, in asking me to immediately destroy her letters to me, "perhaps it is best to destroy them at the Club." In this I recognized a conscience which whispered the right thing, but a human mind which overruled and dangled the fear of exposure before frightened eyes. A wave of pity swept over me. It seemed to me that the values of the real things in life were being placed only upon their shadows, not upon the things themselves. What if the whole world knew? What if a nation knew that it elected a President who was so much a man that he craved to be a father? Where was the infamy of such an exalted desire? Would not every man, woman and child enshrine him in their hearts as a martyr, a man who had sought to know the real things but who was cruelly deprived of his birthright as a lover and a father, in the fullest sense of the word? And who but would love him the more because he had suffered in silence, as he said, harassment and years of weary unhappiness at the hands of her, who, a tragedy in herself, had also been the victim of a wrong placement of life's values. And where the reflection of shame upon Warren Harding's family simply because a child had been born to us, a daughter had been given to me, to help fill my life during his veritable incarceration in the White House, and afterwards—after he had met death as a result of having literally used up his life for his country!
I did not promise to destroy Daisy Harding's letters. These letters, with carbon copies of my own to her and to the Votaws, I was saving for my daughter. Through them she could read the ​story of my approach to her father's family, and, whatever the result of that approach, she was entitled to read of it first-hand.
The next letter I wrote to Miss Harding was one dated November 2nd, Mr. Harding's birthday. His birthday fell one week to the day before mine, and he and I, though he was thirty years older, had always spoken of him as being just one week my senior. I wrote only to tell Miss Harding how "memories crowded each hour of the day," and made no allusion to Elizabeth Ann's matter except to tell her that I had heard nothing from the Votaws in answer to my lengthy letter to them.
Her answer was mailed under date of November 5th, 1925, and, aside from comments about the manner in which that particular birthday of her brother's had been commemorated in Marion, she wrote, "I realize, my dear, how hard your lot, and the tremendous burdens you must be carrying. Pay no attention to the attitude of sister and husband. The situation is a difficult one and will come out all right, I'm sure. In the meanwhile, remember you have my love and sympathy. . . ." Again she promised help, this time for Elizabeth Ann's clothes. And her expressions of solicitude for my own health, in cautioning me not to overwork in my playwriting course at Barnard, touched me deeply. "Lovingly yours, A. V. H. Lewis," her letter was signed.
How dear she was, I thought. No wonder I chose her when I was in high school as my ideal American woman, for she was a very great deal like her brother Warren, who would always be my ideal American man. Much like him in sympathies and instincts.