# The President's Daughter (Britton)/Chapter 15

In early June I left for Chicago to visit my sister Elizabeth before taking up my work with the Steel Corporation in New York, in a stenographic position at $16 per week.
Up to that time I had made no one my confidante—in truth, I was finding it difficult to realize that my hero, Warren G. Harding, loved me, Nan Britton. Naturally I told no one. But my sister, Elizabeth, knowing me as she did, sought a reason for the unusual glow of my cheeks and the happiness written so visibly in my eyes, and when I received my first forty-page love-letter from Mr. Harding, I told Elizabeth the truth. She was unmarried then and living at the Colonial Hotel where I visited her, but she was in love herself with the man she finally married, and, having known so well my childhood adoration for Mr. Harding, sympathized with me though she did not encourage me to continue my friendship with him.
My finances were rather low at that time, I disliked to ask my Chicago benefactors for more money, so I wrote to Mr. Harding about it, as he had instructed me to do. The first money he sent me was in the form of a money order—it seems to me on the American Express Company—for $42, which amount, he told me by letter, was odd enough to make it appear that it was in payment of some possible work I had done for him. Elizabeth went with me when I had it cashed.
A week or so after that I received a letter from Mr. Harding saying he had been asked to speak in Indianapolis, and inviting me to come there to meet him. So I packed my suitcase and the following day Mr. Harding met me at the station in Indianapolis. I was, curiously enough, quite free from nervousness as I walked through the iron gate where he stood waiting, and wondered why he seemed so nervous. His hand shook ​terribly as he took mine after we were in the taxi. Even his voice shook. For me it was a great moment. I was so happy to be with him.
We went immediately to the Claypool Hotel where he registered me as his niece, Miss Harding. During my stay there (we left late that afternoon), I had several phone calls from newspaper men and Republicans who were endeavoring to get hold of Senator Harding. A great deal of the time he was in my room with me and instructed me to tell them to try him at the Republican Club. It was such fun to have him cut them all for me!
There were no climactic intimacies in Indianapolis. When I came to unpack my things I found a note pinned to my nightie on which Elizabeth had written these words, "I trust you, Nan dear." Elizabeth knew I loved Mr. Harding very dearly.
Mr. Harding had to leave me after luncheon—which, I believe, we had together, though I do not remember for sure—and I wandered about until the hour set for me to meet him with my bag at the interurban station. I bought a postcard of the Claypool Hotel to keep as a souvenir. I remember the clerk at the desk had occasion to say something to me and it sounded so good to be addressed as "Miss Harding."
Late that afternoon we took the interurban car to Connersville, Indiana. Mr. Harding was scheduled to speak that evening at Rushville, Indiana, which is near Connersville. That trip on the interurban train was wonderful to me. I wore a black satin dress which my sister Elizabeth had "made over" from one of her own for me. I explained to Mr. Harding that I had a "better one" in my suitcase. "This one suits me, Nan!" he said gaily.
He spent quite some time explaining to me the layout of the City of Washington. He seemed to take much pride in Washington, and I thought to myself that he just looked as though he belonged there rather than in the small city of Marion, Ohio, our home town; he looked eminently the part of a United States Senator. Yet, as I write this, I remember I used ​to find myself cherishing the nice things he said about our home town.
"What would your sister, Daisy Harding, say if she could see us together?" I exclaimed to him.
He laughed whimsically, evidently thinking rather of his wife.
"What would Florence Harding say, I want to know!" he answered.
At Mr. Harding's suggestion I registered in Connersville at the McFarlan Hotel, where he also stopped, as "Miss E. N. Christian," or "Elizabeth N. Christian." Christian was Mr. Harding's secretary's name—George B. Christian—and Mr. Harding said he thought it would be "a good joke" to use his secretary's name. My father and mother must have known the Christians in Marion, and when in high school I knew the older gentleman, George Christian's father, "Colonel" as he was called, because he used to take us girls to the drug store and buy us sodas.
Mr. Harding intended to take me to Rushville that evening, but when he knocked on my door I was in the bathroom down the hall, and as his car was waiting for him he could not wait for me. So I was left to roam around the little village and wait for his return. There, too, I bought a postcard picture of the McFarlan Hotel "for remembrance."
He returned about ten-thirty or eleven. I was sitting in the lobby of the hotel, one of the typical lobbies of a small town hotel, with the chairs lined up before the front window. As he came in he ignored me altogether and I smiled to myself. We had planned to take the midnight train into Chicago, and he had told me that afternoon on the interurban that we would get a berth together if I agreed. But it had really been left undecided.
A taxi was announced about eleven-forty-five and I picked up my bag and went out. Mr. Harding was at my side in a moment. The several politicians who escorted Mr. Harding to the cab did not know of course that we were known to each other, and ostensibly we were not. He spoke up, "I am catch​ing the midnight train into Chicago. Is that your train, young lady?" I replied that it was and he said, "Well, I guess we can both ride down in the same taxi." Inasmuch as I doubt whether Connersville boasted more than one, it was a wise suggestion! I was afraid the taxi man would surely hear Mr. Harding's whispered remarks to me on the way down, especially when he said over and over again, "Dearie, 'r y' going t' sleep with me? Look at me, Nan: goin' to sleep with me, dearie?" How I loved to hear him say "dearie"!
We secured a section to Chicago. The remembrance of that trip from Connersville to Chicago is very beautiful although it, too, was free from complete embraces. We were both dressed the next morning before we reached the Englewood Station, about nine minutes from the downtown station, and I remarked to Mr. Harding that he looked a bit tired.
"God, sweetheart! what do you expect? I'm a man, you know."
In Chicago, we went to a downtown hotel. Here Mr. Harding registered us as man and wife, although I stood apart and do not know the name he used. However, if I were to see that register as well as all of the others wherein we were registered, I am sure I could identify his writing, for he did not disguise it well no matter how hard he tried.
I noticed he was conversing with the clerk and when he joined me he said, in a low voice, on the way to the elevator, "The clerk said if I could prove that you were my wife he would give us the room for nothing!" I asked him laughingly what he had replied to that and he said, "I told him I was not in the habit of proving my wife's identity and that I had no objection at all to paying for accommodations!" Nevertheless, we were very circumspect while there that morning and our love-making was, as it had been up until then, restricted. We had breakfast served in our room. I remember that it was the first time that season I had had strawberries.
Mr. Harding took the noon train back—I think going direct to Washington.