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[Page 64]
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PART 15.
I had during my spare moments been engaged in a vain endeavour to find the whereabouts of Mrs Dwyer Russell whose friendship I had formed when she visited Australia to take the part of Mrs Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch. She had, I found, long retired from active theatrical work, and I had just given up hope of finding her address when I mentioned my failure to Miss Cutting. She by one of those strange chances I was always encountering had just that morning received a letter from Miss Amy Lowell of Boston who mentioned that Mrs Dwyer Russell was spending the summer with her, and assisting her in reading proofs for her new book that she expected to be published in September.
The result of that discovery was, in answer to a lettergram I sent that night, a long telegram inviting me to spend a few days with them at Boston, holding out the most alluring inducement of a motor tour. The difficulty was then to accept all, but I found by curtailing time at each it might be managed. I left for Hudson River by the morning train and though I had heard much of its beauty was hardly prepared for the noble breadth of water that all other rivers I had seen were mere pigmies.
Mrs Roosevelt's house was situated on one of the prettiest beaches giving a view of several miles, where the gay steamers from New York pass up and down. Mrs Frank Roosevelt (whose husband is assistant Secretary to the Navy) was spending the summer with her family there, and it was she who met me at the station, and laughingly hoped I would not object to being made an experiment, for she was just learning to drive. She seemed however, extremely competent though the Chaffeur cast an apprehensive eye.
I recall the delight of those two days with supreme satisfaction. The gracious hospitaility of my hostess - the charm of her grandchildren for whom she had built a special wing, so that with their French Governess, and their Nurses they might not lack