RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS
Boardman and the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Beekman Winthrop, and Mrs. Winthrop; and Captain Butt, of course, was with us always.
We headed north for the Maine coast with Eastport our first stopping place. The mayor of that interesting city of fisheries came on board as soon as we dropped anchor, made a felicitous speech of welcome and proceeded to lay out a programme of sightseeing and festivities which would have kept us there for a considerable longer time than I could stay if it had all been carried out, and this experience was repeated everywhere we went. We had to decline everything except a motor ride about town for the pin of getting a glimpse of the weir fisheries and the sardine canneries, but a President doesn't visit Eastport very often, the people thronging the streets made it seem quite like a holiday.
Then a committee from the Island of Campo Bello, which lies a short distance off the coast and which is a British possession, waited upon us with an invitation to come across and go for a buckboard ride around a part of the island. It sounded like such a homely and restful form of amusement that Mr. Taft was sorely tempted to break the unwritten law which decrees that a President may not set foot outside United States territory, but he concluded that he had better not. The rest of us, however, decided to go and we had a jolly, jolting ride which ended at the summer home of Mrs. Franklin Roosevelt.
Everywhere we went we were most delightfully entertained, finding beautiful homes and merry summer hosts at every port and town. At fashionable Bar Harbor we found a colony of friends whose winter homes are in Washington and Mr. Taft got some excellent golf. There were luncheons and dinners, of course, every day and everywhere, to say nothing of teas and large receptions, and Mr. Taft had to make speeches, too, and meet all the Maine politicians.
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