Evening star., 1948-04-11

fHANhLfN u
January 80, 1Sd
when he was 10. His mother, who
at as had married . man twice her
age, dotted on her only child. At
Groton and Harvard, he wrote her
at least twice . week. She saved
every letter. When he took student
quarters at Cambridge, she acquired
q house in Boston to be near him.
When he married she built the two
town houses in fashionable East
Sixty-ninth street with q wide
doorway that could throw the living
rooms of each house, together. And
she furnished them. Eleanor Roose-
welt, the bride, was q little disap-
pointed in not having an opportunity
to furnish her own home but that
anything was amiss never seemed to
occur to her husband. In 1910, when
Farley refused to manage the third
term campaign, Eleanor Roosevelt
warned him OF the nature OF the
letter her mother-in-law might
write him.
"She can't understand any one
refusing Roosevelt" the Presidents
wife said.
His Early Letters
The Roosevelt enthusiasm shows
in letter written when he was IA,
which started:
"Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah-.Gro-
ton 46, St. Marks 0. I am hoarse
deaf, and ready to stand on my
cocoanut. Our team played a won-
derful game and the victory was
ours after the first five minutes"
A senior and 81 he wrote her on
December 1, 1908, about something
he had told her the week end be-
fore, that he was in love with his
distant cousin, the niece of the
President Of the United States.
Dearest Mamma: I know what
pain I must have caused you and
you know I wouldn't do it if I
really could have helped it-mais tu
sais, me VOLTA! That's all that
could be said. I know my mind
have known 1t for a long time,
and know that I could never think
otherwise. Result: I am the hap
piest man just now in the world;
likewise the luckiest. And for you,
Dear Mommy, you know that MOTH
ing can ever change what We have
always been and always will be to
each other-only now you have two
children to love and to love YOU
and Eleanor as you know will al
ways be a daughter to you in every
true way"
And on December he wrote her:
90 . I am so glad that you
are getting over the strangeness of
it ALL knew you would and that
you couldn't help feeling that not
only I but you are the luckiest and
will always be the happiest people
In the world in gaining any one
like e. to love and be loved by"
The biographers will be grateful
for Frances Perkins work, "The
Roosevelt I Knew" OF all his
cabinet ofncers she knew him long
est and knew him best. She, was
Of the same social class, through
family and breeding-not wealth.
She met him at q tea dance in
1910 at the home of Mrs. Walston
Brown in Gramercy Park, New
York. Miss Perkins, who is a fe-
male bluestocking, was not i'm
pressed then and never became
impressed with Roosevelt's intel
lectual achievements. He read po-
litfcal history, naval history, and
books of travel, she wrote.
He was not a great student" !"
she wrote. "I never was able to
make out that even during the days
Of his illness he had read substan-
TALLY in the field of economics. He
rarely mentioned q book on eco
nomics."
An Unsatisfactory Interview
In this connection her account of
his meeting with John Maynard
Keynes in the early days of his
presidency Is interesting. Keynes
was the English economist who
prescribed government spending to
keep up national incomes in times
of depression. When he came to
America to see Roosevelt it was as
though Marx had lived to call on
Lenin in Moscow. Here was a head