er began a new chapter in
his work because the world had begun a new epoch in its history, let us
have a glimpse of this man outside of his mines and his offices. Let us
see him in his home, with his family, with his books if he has any, and
with his friends of whom he has many.

His two children, Herbert and Allan, were born in 1903 and 1907
respectively. Living first in apartments, the Hoovers felt that they and
the boys and the dog Rags needed more room, or perhaps, better,
different kind of room, room for an energetic family of Americans to
grow up in Western American fashion, as far as this could be compassed
in London. And so they found, farther west, in a short street just off
Kensington High Street and close to Kensington Gardens, a roomy old
house with a garden with real trees in it and some grass and
flower-beds. It had been built long before by somebody who liked room,
and then rebuilt, or at least made over and added to, by Montin Conway,
the Alpinist and author. For generations it had been called "The Red
House," a name that became in the succeeding years more and more widely
known to Americans living in, coming to, or passing through London, for
it became a well-known house of American foregathering.

I knew it first in 1912 when I was doing some work in the British Museum
Library. The bedroom to which my wife and I were shown was inhabited
already by a happy and very vocal family of little Javanese seed birds
and green parrakeets, a part of the boys' menagerie which had to find
refuge from the other animals already housed in their adjoining rooms.
Out in the garden there were pigeons fluttering in and out of a cote,
and hens solemnly inspecting the newly-seeded flower-beds. A big silver
Persian cat, and a smaller yellow Siamese one regularly attended
breakfasts, and Rags irregularly attended everything. The cats were Mr.
Hoover's favorites. He liked to have one on his lap as he talked.

There were bookshelves in all of the rooms, and I noted that the owner,
however many the guests had been, or long the evening, never went up to
bed without a book in his hand. I came later to know how fixed this
night-reading habit had become, for in the Belgian relief years when we
had frequently to cross the perilous North Sea together on our way from
Thames-mouth to Holland or back in one of the little Dutch boats which
used to run across twice a week until most of the boats had been blown
up by floating mines, Hoover