The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1916-10-26
FMR. WILSON AS SEEN BY
 ONE OF HIS FAMILY CIRCLE
Professor Stockton Axson Brother of the First Wife of the President Writes an Intimate Sketch of Mr. Wil- son as He Is at Home.
(By STOCKTON AXsON.)

cured for publication the follow
 ing intimate personal sketch of
 Woodrow Wilson, the man, writ
 ten by Professor Stockton Ak
 son, whose sister, Ellen Louise
 Axson. was the Presidents first
 wife. Professor AXson not only
 had close personal relations with
 the President for thirty-five
 years, but he served under him
 when MT. Wilson was President
 of Princeton University. He was
 Assistant Professor of English
 Literature at Princeton from
 1899 to 1904 and Professor from
 1904 to 1913, when he joined the
 Faculty of Rice Institute, Hous-
 ton, Texas, as Professor of Eng '. fish.
 S There are many who can analyze and assess Wilson the statesman, knows to all the world, but the ranks are thinning among those who have known the man intimately since his young manhood. Woodrow Wilson belongs to the world; is it then in bad taste for one who has had the treat privilege of seeing him at close range for thirty-five years to talk about him familiarity to the world?
 My keenest embarrassment arises from my wonder about what MT. Wilson himself will say if he should ever read this article, for 1t has never pleased him to have his personal af- fairs Intimate talked about, and yet the only reason why I should write 9t all is that I am in a position to talk, about him personally and that the country has a right to know what manner of man Is President.
 II do not suppose that I myself know when I first heard Woodrow Wilson's name mentioned; probably 1n my earliest childhood, for between his family and mine there has al- ways been an intimacy. His
 mothers sister was Mrs. James Bones, and the Boneses were our next-door neighbors in Rome, Ga Jessie and Marian Bones were my childhood companions; Helen being much younger; and the names of Woodrow Wilson's father and mother, Uncle Zoe and Aunt Jessie. were as familiar to me as the names of my own uncles and aunts.
 But I very distinctly remember the first time that anybody talked to me in detail about Woodrow Wilson; it was my father, In a letter written to me when was away at school. Like Dr. Joseph Wilson, my father was a Presbyterian minister, and, also like Dr. Wilson, he practiced more than he preached. I think my father went on the theory that his example would do more for my upbrineing than wordy precepts, and so the first hom- lily he ever delivered to me was in the form of a long letter written just after Woodrow Wilson had ended A visit to his relatives in Rome. My father made this young man. ten years older than myself, his text, described him, and held him up to me as pattern Of young manhood T recall one phrase, virtually ver- batirh: '1 can think of nothing that would make me so happy as to have a son like that"
 That lettey was written thirty -four years ago; but I remember it wildly, both because it was practically the only private sermon my father ever preached to me. and because the wish expressed was fulfilled, not in the way he was hoping, by my trans formation, but by Woodrow Wilson himself becoming my fathers son by marriage. My father lived to know of the engagement, though he died before the marriage.
 It was in 1883 that Woodrow Will. son and Ellen Axson became engag-i ed She was visiting friends in the North Carolina mouhtains when my father fell seriously ill He had me summon her home by teiegramtmy mother had d1ed two years before, and my sister waA the responsible member of the family. She went to Asheville to catch a train, but as she had to wait several hours for it she went toNa hotel and whiled away the time reading by a window. As fate would have 1t, Woodrow Wilson who was driving in the mountains, pass ed the hotel, chanced to look up, and saw her profile at the window. The two had been together in Rome the previous summer, and it needed just the unexpected encounter in the North Carolina mountains to show them what life meant for each and for both of them.
 Unforsettable to me is the convef> sation which my sister and had on the night of her arrival home. In the earlier part of the evening she had been anxious about my father, but when he had at last been made and had fallen asleep she joined me in the little sitting room, her dear face flushed. her eyesl bright Can you keep a secret ?" she asked, and upon my intimation that I could she told me that she was engaged to be married, the man. ner of the meeting, and her joy. ''He is the greatest man in the world" she said land the best" In that faith she never fa1tered in all the years that followed
 Of the many mental pictures which I have of my sister three at this moment stand out with peculiar vfyidness: the way she looked that night when she told me of her en- the way she looked when she he7d her first born in her arms, waiting for him to come from a dis tant place for the first sight of his child, and the way she looked in the little cottage in Princeton the night that he was elected President of the United States. It was two years be- fore they were married Che was studying at Johns Hopkins Univer- stty in Ba1timore) in the manse of the Independent Presbyterian church In Savannah, Ga, his father and her grandfather officiating I remember how he and I chatted about the books in my grandfather's bookcases while we waited for the bride to come also remember a less idy11ic circumstances, how bliss was la oF