# The President's Daughter (Britton)/Chapter 34

Mr. Harding's generosity took many forms. One time during 1917 or 1918 when we were alone—though I don't remember where—I was sitting on his lap admiring his hands. They were large, well-shaped hands, the hands of capability, yet artistic too, and I never tired watching him use them. They were expressive of many feelings. They fascinated me completely. I was admiring them, and incidentally the ring on the third finger of his left hand. The ring was set with one quite sizable diamond—a beautiful ring in its entirety. Some organization had presented it to him "in appreciation," he said. I think he thought I admired the stone and had visions of having it in a ring for myself!
"So far as I'm concerned, I'd as lief give you this ring, Nan, if it were not for Florence!" He smiled when I looked up at him, and hugged me tight. Frankly, I would have loved the ring, of course, but I knew he could not give it to me. I wonder who has it now, for I would cherish it so if it were in my possession. Many nights I have spent with that hand in mine and twisted and played with that ring. It sparkled at me across the table and I could see a thousand colors in it when I, lying beside him, held his hand up to the light which came through the transom above our bedroom door.
This was, as I said, before 1919. After I had my own ring I found the same pleasure in studying its lights. I remember the morning after he had put my ring upon my engagement ​finger we walked in Central Park. A windy morning and a brilliant sun. I strolled along with my left hand in front of me, looking at my precious ring. He had given it to me!
I remember that morning Mr. Harding's hat blew off and he had to chase it about half a block. Somehow I used to love to witness those "embarrassing moments"—his confusion was so boyish. I remember too how I exclaimed over the glory of everything that morning, in the sheer joyousness of being with him. We passed the zebras and I remarked upon their beauty! "Nan, you don't think those things are beautiful, do you?" Mr. Harding asked incredulously, smiling. But, as I continued to express my admiration of each animal, he suggested that we look at them no longer, and led me into, the sheltered paths where eventually he found a bench where we could sit down and he could make love to me.
An instance of his kindly nature and generosity occurs to me. We were going down Fifth Avenue. He was taking me to a store of my choosing, Lord & Taylor's, to buy me a bag. I was always happily oblivious of everybody and everything about me when I was walking on the street with Mr. Harding, and so I did not notice that we had passed a blind man carrying the proverbial tin cup and selling pencils. But Mr. Harding had seen him and he disengaged himself from my arm, went back and dropped a coin into the blind man's cup, and was back with me, scarcely giving me time to realize what had happened.
"Never pass a blind man, Nan," he admonished me gently. I knew his sympathy had been made the keener by his intimate knowledge of blindness in the case of his own sister Mary who had passed on a good many years before and who had been almost blind. To this day I cannot pass a blind person, and if they do pass me before I have got my money out, I go back, as he did, prompted by his voice and the impulse it always arouses.
Mr. Harding himself selected the bag for me at Lord & Taylor's. Nothing gave me greater pleasure than to have some​thing he had selected for me himself. The bag was a dark blue pin-seal and cost $11.75. "Here, Nan," he said brightly, picking up the bag from dozens of others on the counter, "I think this is fine—what do you think?" I loved it. I would have loved it had it been but one-hundredth as pretty as it was, but it happened to be a very stunning bag. Everything he chose, I thought, would be just right.
I afterwards had this bag in Marion, Ohio, at Miss Daisy Harding's, during the time when she was still living with her father on East Center Street, before she was married. Mrs. Heber Herbert Votaw, her sister and Warren's, was there. They were examining and admiring the bag.
"Where did you get this bag, Nan?" one of them inquired.
"Oh, a sweetheart of mine gave it to me," I answered lightly, just as I was about to pass up the front stairs to the room I occupied while visiting there.
"Now, Nan," called Carrie Votaw after me, "you know you never loved anybody in your life but Warren!" How little she knew the deep meaning of her words! I have since recalled this incident to Daisy Harding in a letter written to her last year.
Another instance of Mr. Harding's kindheartedness comes to mind:
I always used to take him to the Pennsylvania Station when he left for Washington. I knew pretty well what trains came into New York from Washington and those that went out. Often he would come over just to spend the evening, taking me to dinner and the theatre and returning on what he called "the midnight" to Washington. When I first met him in 1917 at the Manhattan Hotel, one of the things he said to me, after learning that I had a great fondness for the theatre, was, "Nan, let me take you to the theatre! I'll come over from Washington just for that, and I'd delight to do it too!"
So one night he had been over and was returning. It was quite late, of course, when we reached the station from the theatre—about eleven-thirty probably—and before he left me ​to get his train he took me over to the candy stand in the corner of the vaulted concourse and asked me to pick out a box of candy.
Two or three unkempt little children stood gazing wistfully up at the colorful array of sweets above them—children whose bed-hour should have been six or seven o'clock. Mr. Harding looked down at them and put his hand on one little fellow's head.
"Why don't you buy it?" he teased. I adored him when he talked to children. Their eyes grew big as they looked way up at him and smiled sheepishly. He handed them each a coin—a quarter apiece I think it was—and looked at me and winked.
Around Christmas time in 1918 I received a letter from Miss Daisy Harding, with whom I have always corresponded more or less regularly. After I had read it I enclosed it in one of mine to her brother Warren. He had given me $50 that Christmas, with which I had purchased the long-coveted mesh-bag of which I have spoken. In his reply to my letter he enclosed a letter which he had recently received from his sister Daisy in which she thanked him for his Christmas gift to her of $10. Miss Harding remembered having received this amount of money from him as a Christmas gift when I recalled it to her mind in June of 1925.
I remember hearing my mother tell how Mrs. Sinclair had told her that Warren Harding, upon being at their residence one Sunday morning when she was about to leave for church, had given her $25 to put in the collection basket. Although he did not attend the church Mrs. Sinclair attended, nor even attended his own church regularly, Mr. Harding was quick to recognize the good in any organization, religious or otherwise, and wanted to contribute to its progress. Warren Harding was one of the three kindest men I have ever known.