ve not been hurt at all. My throat is a little
sore, because once when one of them had a strangle hold I also got hold
of his windpipe and thought I could perhaps choke him off before he
could choke me. However, he got ahead.

White House, April 9, 1904.

DEAR TED:

I am very glad I have been doing this Japanese wrestling, but when I am
through with it this time I am not at all sure I shall ever try it again
while I am so busy with other work as I am now. Often by the time I get
to five o'clock in the afternoon I will be feeling like a stewed owl,
after an eight hours' grapple with Senators, Congressmen, etc.; then I
find the wrestling a trifle too vehement for mere rest. My right
ankle and my left wrist and one thumb and both great toes are swollen
sufficiently to more or less impair their usefulness, and I am well
mottled with bruises elsewhere. Still I have made good progress, and
since you left they have taught me three new throws that are perfect
corkers.

LOVE FOR THE WHITE HOUSE

White House, May 28, 1904.

DEAR TED:

. . . . .

I am having a reasonable amount of work and rather more than a
reasonable amount of worry. But, after all, life is lovely here. The
country is beautiful, and I do not think that any two people ever got
more enjoyment out of the White House than Mother and I. We love
the house itself, without and within, for its associations, for
its stillness and its simplicity. We love the garden. And we like
Washington. We almost always take our breakfast on the south portico
now, Mother looking very pretty and dainty in her summer dresses. Then
we stroll about the garden for fifteen or twenty minutes, looking at
the flowers and the fountain and admiring the trees. Then I work until
between four and five, usually having some official people to lunch--now
a couple of Senators, now a couple of Ambassadors, now a literary
man, now a capitalist or a labor leader, or a scientist, or a big-game
hunter. If Mother wants to ride, we then spend a couple of hours on
horseback. We had a lovely ride up on the Virginia shore since I came
back, and yesterday went up Rock Creek and swung back home by the roads
where the locust trees were most numerous--for they are now white with
blossoms. It is the last great burst of bloom which we shall see this
year except the laurels. But there are plenty of flowers in bloom or
just coming out, the honeysuckle most conspicuously. The south portico
is fragrant wit