# The President's Daughter (Britton)/Chapter 153

A letter received from Daisy Harding, written under date of February 10th, 1926, was the longest letter I had yet received from her and was in reply to my letter of February 5th. In this letter. Miss Harding went into detail about many things. She told me how her husband had recently learned the facts of my story for the first time from a man in Marion, who in turn had heard it from Tim Slade. Inasmuch as Tim had told me that he had spoken to Mr. Hoke Donithen, a Marion lawyer, while approaching supposedly sympathetic persons, I assumed it was he to whom Miss Harding referred. She wrote, "I was shocked beyond measure, because I didn't want Ralph to know and have his faith destroyed, then I was alarmed for fear others ​might know of the same thing and the terrible damage it would do to you both in your home town . . ." She further wrote that she hoped and prayed it would not go farther.
Referring to the sharp letter sent to Mr. Votaw by me in reply to his brief note to me, Miss Harding mistakenly alludes to it as having been sent to her sister, Mrs. Votaw, and says, ". . . I got the letter you wrote Carolyn, and Nan, dear, I was . . . horribly sad and depressed about it all. I knew you were desperate, but you are not using the right tactics . . ." She begged that I withhold the story from her other sister, Mrs. Charity Remsberg, in California. ". . . I want to spare her the shock I had when it was told to me. Furthermore, I don't want her faith destroyed . . ."
Miss Harding frequently alluded to the "faith" members of her family would lose when they learned that their brother had been the father of a child. Of what real depth is any faith which can be destroyed by the mere revelation that another faith of highest quality has been maintained between a man and a woman? Webster defines faith as "firm belief or trust in a person . . ." I defy anyone to say that Warren Harding disqualified himself to be worthy of the faith reposed in him simply because of his fatherhood! What would diminish that faith? Watchful solicitude for the woman he loved above any other? Loving kindness in his material manifestations toward her and toward his child? Loyalty to his political party and to his country? Generosity toward his family? Who more nobly kept these faiths than Warren Gamaliel Harding?
Daisy Harding's letter went on: "I want you to know, no matter what you think of either Mr. V. or the other brother, that there are no two finer, more honorable and just men living, and because of their love, devotion and loyalty to the one already gone, they are not going to believe anything against him until it can be absolutely proven . . . ." How varied are the conceptions of love and loyalty! And who of us has reached immunity from sin and can judge what works against his brother? Had the case been reversed, who more quickly would have come to ​the moral and financial rescue of another who needed help and mental sustaining than the very brother whose own child these two men hesitated to recognize? According to a newspaper clipping which I have pasted in my Harding book, President Harding's very "hobby" was to help the "down and out." The clipping reads, "Mankind needs encouragement and help. There is much suffering in the world and there is much heart-sickness . . ." Truly, the recognition of how greatly charity, forbearance, mercy, goodness, and all their kindred attributes work for the stature of the spirit of man was exemplified with pathetic beauty in the heart and life of Warren Gamaliel Harding.
Daisy Harding wrote me the details of the $90,000 brokerage matter she told me about in June of 1925. Then she went on: "Now then on top of that, your claim is put in. Do you wonder that the whole family are up in arms against a thing that is so hard to prove? . . . ."
"Hard to prove?" Why, I had kept, with her brother, the faith! That very fidelity which her brother and I had shown toward each other; that faith which had protected the Harding name; that very brand of faith was responsible for the fact that every love-letter, any one of which would have irrefutably proved my story, had been destroyed. "But if convinced, they will be just," she wrote. Yet the Votaws had denied me the interview which I knew would have enabled me to advance sufficient proofs.
Poor Daisy Harding! Trying to be fair to me and just to her own family as she understood justice! ". . . you still have me who never fails a friend . . . for the sake of the dear beloved, guard the secret, protect his name and everything will come out all right . . ."
In spite of the fact that I disagreed with a great deal that Miss Harding wrote, there was one paragraph which pleased me. She was leaving the following Sunday for Florida, and on her way back she said she was either coming to New York or have me meet her in Takoma Park, suburban to Washington, at the ​Votaw residence, where "we will trash this matter out." That was exactly what I wished—the opportunity to present the thing to the entire group of Hardings.