tion to which the American Congressional system had ever been
subjected. It brought Wilson a professorship at the newly established
Bryn Mawr College and drew to him other growing minds like Page's.
"Watch that man!" was Page's admonition to his friends. Wilson then went
into academic work and Page plunged into the exactions of daily and
periodical journalism, but Page's papers show that the two men had kept
in touch with each other during the succeeding thirty years. These
papers include a collection of letters from Woodrow Wilson, the earliest
of which is dated October 30, 1885, when the future President was
beginning his career at Bryn Mawr. He was eager to come to New York,
Wilson said, and discuss with Page "half a hundred topics" suggested by
"Congressional Government." The atmosphere at Bryn Mawr was evidently
not stimulating. "Such a talk would give me a chance to let off some of
the enthusiasm I am just now painfully stirring up in enforced silence."
The _Forum_ and the _Atlantic Monthly_, when Page was editor, showed
many traces of his interest in Wilson, who was one of his most frequent
contributors. When Wilson became President of Princeton, he occasionally
called upon his old _Atlantic_ friend for advice. He writes to Page on
various matters--to ask for suggestions about filling a professorship or
a lectureship; and there are also references to the difficulties Wilson
is having with the Princeton trustees.

Page's letters also portray the new hopes with which Wilson inspired
him. One of his best loved correspondents was Henry Wallace, editor of
_Wallace's Farmer_, a homely and genial Rooseveltian. Page was one of
those who immensely admired Roosevelt's career; but he regarded him as a
man who had finished his work, at least in domestic affairs, and whose
great claim upon posterity would be as the stimulator of the American
conscience. "I see you are coming around to Wilson," Page writes, "and
in pretty rapid fashion. I assure you that that is the solution of the
problem. I have known him since we were boys, and I have been studying
him lately with a great deal of care. I haven't any doubt but that is
the way out. The old labels 'Democrat' and 'Republican' have ceased to
have any meaning, not only in my mind and in yours, but I think in the
minds of nearly all the people. Don't you feel that way?"

The campaign of 1912 was approaching its end when this letter was
written; and no proceeding in American politi