# The President's Daughter (Britton)/Chapter 2

Nineteen-ten was an epochal year in my life. Ohio was electing a Governor, and the Republican candidate of that famous gubernatorial election was no other than the brother of my adored English teacher! I have often tried to remember how this knowledge was first conveyed to me; whether I had actually known that there was a Warren Gamaliel Harding from hearing conversations about him at home, whether I had been first introduced to his existence through talks with Miss Harding on one of the many "walks home" we used to have; whether I had heard of him through one whom I will call Mrs. Sinclair, whose husband, a judge and a prominent Democrat in Ohio, played cards with Mr. Harding very often; or whether I beheld his picture, ubiquitously displayed in almost every store window on Main and Center Streets, as I walked to and from high school. My early recollections are not so much concerned with actually seeing him as with the unforgettable sensations I experienced after I had once seen him and knew that he was for me my "ideal American."
If I had ever childishly allied myself with my father's political party, the Democrats, I withdrew instantly in favor of the party advocated by my mother's family, and from then on I was a full-fledged Republican.
It must have kept me pretty busy to maintain a high average in school and at the same time become the self-appointed spokesman into which I developed during those stirring pre-election days. Warren Harding and Warren Harding's future formed my life's background, and whether or not anyone else credited me with the capacity for such a cumulative emotion as love, I knew that I was in love with Warren Harding.
​Certain people, including Abigail and Carolyn Harding, speaking truthfully, could tell you of the spectacle I made of myself those months, and indeed in years that followed, for I talked about their brother incessantly; no, I did not talk, I raved. I was fourteen years old, or going on fourteen, an age when one would think a wife of a man Warren Harding's age (he must have been about forty-five then and Mrs. Harding six or seven years his senior) would be entirely free from any feeling of jealousy regarding a mere child. But I remember well when Mrs. Sinclair telephoned my mother, and with friendly solicitude advised her to curb my girlish enthusiasm, or at least try to quiet me vocally, for my own sake! She said that at the most recent meeting of the Twigs (the most fashionable older ladies' club in Marion), to which Mrs. Harding also belonged but who was absent on that occasion, "Nan Britton" had been almost the sole topic of conversation, and furthermore the ladies thought it quite scandalous that I should be so freely declaring my adoration for a married man. Of course mother did also, but apparently I didn't!
My mother used to try to inspire me with antipathy for Mr. Harding and the thing she cited more than anything else was his fondness for tobacco. She would come home from downtown and say, "I saw Mr. Harding standing such-and-such a place, chewing tobacco!" But neither this information nor the withering disdain of mother's grimace affected me in the least. I think he must have given up this habit later on; I know I never saw him in later years use tobacco in any form except cigars and cigarettes.
In order for my adoration to appear more "in form" I conceived the idea of affecting a crush on Mrs. Harding. She was not my "type" of heroine at all, but I used to pretend I was a great admirer of her anyway. I remember how I used to telephone the Harding residence when I thought Mr. Harding might be there and might answer the phone. I would shut myself up in our "back bedroom" which was away from the rest of the house and where the telephone hung on the wall, ​and then softly give central the number. I was always afraid mother might hear me. Often the maid answered the telephone. When this occurred I would ask for Mrs. Harding. Sometimes she herself would answer. Once, I remember, mother came in while I was calling and demanded to know to whom I was talking. When I said "Mrs. Harding," she took the receiver and talked with her herself. It may have been that very time when Mrs. Harding informed mother that she could tell Nan that so far as "Warren" was concerned, "distance lends enchantment." But there were those rare times when he himself answered the telephone, when he would say upon my telling him it was "Nan Britton," "Well, how-do-you-do, Miss Britton; and how are you?" in that silvery voice I so loved, and I would immediately become so confused and tremble so I thought he must sense it all from the other end of the wire.
I knew the number of the Harding car by heart and could spot it blocks away. One time I had occasion to go to the Union Station to meet someone and when I reached there I saw the Harding Stevens-Duryea parked outside. The Harding dog then was a bull, rather a fearsome looking animal, and he was always in the car whenever it was out. I was so full of love for Mr. Harding that it extended to any possession of his, and when I observed that dignified creature sitting alert in the front seat alone, I walked over to the car to pet him. But he was "on his job" and snapped at me so fiercely that I backed off with all possible speed. Thereafter I confined my manifestations of affection to the Hardings themselves.