I wish to express my grateful acknowledgment to Eleanor Franklin Egan and my daughter for their valued assistance in the preparation for publication of these Recollections. Helen Herron Taft....

Cincinnati, the city of my birth and early memories, was, in the ’sixties, about as begrimed and noisy and altogether unattractive as any place well could be; yet it possessed certain attributes which...

One day after we had been married less than a year my husband came home looking so studiously unconcerned that I knew at once he had something to tell me. “Nellie, what would you think,” he began casu...

The United States Army Transport Hancock had been assigned to the Commission for the trip from San Francisco to Manila and it was at noon on a pleasant day in mid-April⁠—the seventeenth⁠—that she pull...

To be quarantined in a house too small for the number of its occupants, behind closed doors, each one of which bears aloft a sinister yellow placard across which is printed in large, black letters: “D...

The China Sea has an evil reputation. On its shores one hears much about the typhoon season and the changing monsoons, and bad sailors would, no doubt, like to have their sailing dates determined by t...

In the Far East one meets certain expressions the significance of which may be described as adamantine. Each represents a racial attitude against which it is useless to contend. In Japan it is the equ...

There was a trying period of unrest and uncertainty in our early experience in the Philippines, during which we lived in a state of suspense which can hardly be described; a state of suspense which in...

The Philippine Islands as mere territory do not seem to have impressed themselves very forcibly upon the general American mind, and the average person one talks with really has but a vague conception ...

I should like to say here, by way of explanation, which may or may not be necessary, that I am not trying in this narrative to pose as a woman endowed with an especial comprehension of such problems o...

There is no denying that the arrangements made, during my absence in the north, for my participation in the events attending my husband’s induction into the office of Governor of the Philippines were ...

The winter of 1902, the greater part of which we spent in Cincinnati, is memorable only as a period of bereavement and protracted illnesses. Perhaps such a record has no place in a narrative wherein i...

When Mr. Taft reached Manila he found the city en fête and in a state of intense excitement which had prevailed for two days during which the people had expected every hour to hear the great siren on ...

To illustrate what seems to me to be rather widely contrasted views of the position of Secretary of War for the United States, I think I must relate two experiences I had in the beginning of Mr. Taft’...

These were the days when Mr. Roosevelt, Mr. Root and Mr. Taft were known and very aptly caricatured as “The Three Musketeers,” a thing which both pleased and amused them. Mr. Roosevelt was, of course,...

I have not the space to give a detailed account of this trip around the world. After a pleasant voyage on the steamship Minnesota we were given in Japan the same warm welcome that we had always had th...

Shortly after my husband’s election, having spent a couple of restful weeks at Hot Springs, Virginia, we went to Augusta, Georgia, and took the old house known as the Terrett Cottage, near the Bon Air...

The members of my family, and especially my children, are prone to indulgence in good-natured personalities and they like to make the most of my serious attitude toward my domestic responsibilities, s...

My very active participation in my husband’s career came to an end when he became President. I had always had the satisfaction of knowing almost as much as he about the politics and the intricacies of...

Our second summer at Beverly began with a call from Mr. Roosevelt. When the ex-President returned to the United States, on the 18th of June, 1910, after an absence of a year and a half, Mr. Taft sent ...