tly come down.

The reception room had a desk in the corner, and on a row of chairs
across the whole side of the room were piles of unopened letters. It is
a plain, modestly but decently furnished room, such as you would expect
to find in the modest house of a professor at Princeton. During his
presidency of the college, he had lived in the President's house in the
college yard. This was his own house of his professorial days.

"Hello, Page, come out here: I am glad to see you." There he stood in a
door at the back of the room, which led to his library and work room.
"Come back here."

"In the best of all possible worlds, the right thing does sometimes
happen," said I.

"Yes."

"And a great opportunity."

He smiled and was cordial and said some pleasant words. But he was
weary. "I have cobwebs in my head." He was not depressed but
oppressed--rather shy, I thought, and I should say rather lonely. The
campaign noise and the little campaigners were hushed and gone. There
were no men of companionable size about him, and the Great Task lay
before him. The Democratic party has not brought forward large men in
public life during its long term of exclusion from the Government; and
the newly elected President has had few opportunities and a very short
time to make acquaintances of a continental kind. This little college
town, this little hitherto corrupt state, are both small.

I went at my business without delay. The big country-life idea, the
working of great economic forces to put its vitalization within sight,
the coming equilibrium by the restoration of country life--all
coincident with his coming into the Presidency. His Administration must
fall in with it, guide it, further it. The chief instruments are the
Agricultural Department, the Bureau of Education, and the power of the
President himself to bring about Rural Credit Societies and similar
organized helps. He quickly saw the difference between Demonstration
Work by the Agricultural Department and the plan to vote large sums to
agricultural colleges and to the states to build up schools.

"Who is the best man for Secretary of Agriculture?"

I ought to have known, but I didn't. For who is?

"May I look about and answer your question later?"

"Yes, I will thank you."

"I wish to find the very best men for my Cabinet, regardless of
consequences. I do not forget the party as an instrument of government,
and I do not wish to do violence to it. But I must have