The Coolidge Week

How do you do, President Coolidge?

How do you do, President Coolidge?

How are you?

So sang a group of girls and boys, waving their hats or their handkerchiefs from the porch of Camp Roosevelt, when the Presi-dent arrived in Yellowstone Park. In response, the President bowed; Mrs. Coolidge bowed, smiled; John Coolidge bowed, smiled. The song’s lack of variety was balanced by its peculiar pertinency; the President had left Rapid City the night before, suffering from indigestion but had now recovered.

¶ The next morning Mrs. Coolidge received a visitor in the person of Miss Marguerite Lindsley, forest ranger. She, clad in green riding habit, carrying a gun, informed Mrs. Coolidge that at the Montana Agricultural College she had belonged to Mrs. Coolidge’s sorority, Pi Beta Phi.*

¶ When the Coolidge limousine stopped on the way to the Lake Hotel a bear-cub, his face curled into an ingratiating imitation of a Washington lobbyist asking favors, approached the Coolidges as if they had been ordinary tourists, sat on his haunches and begged for food. He got none.

¶ On the porch of a hostelry in Old Faithful, there was parked an old baggage-truck. When Mrs. Coolidge saw this early one morning, she beamed. To secret service men, to John Coolidge she expressed a desire to be wheeled about in the rude conveyance. Laughing, John Coolidge trundled his mother here and there until the diversion grew wearisome.

¶ Everett & William Sawyer of Lincoln, Neb., college-bellboys at the Lake Hotel, met Mrs. Coolidge, told her they were fourth cousins to the President. He, interested, invited them to call and explain the relationship. When they were unable to explain, President Coolidge, genealogical expert, did so for them.

¶ Nature produces her best efforts without regard to the audience. That explains the curious comedy sensitive people feel when dolts posturing on high mountains, or above deep chasms breathe: “Wonderful . . . isn’t it glorious?” Somehow compliments seem a trifle impudent as well as totally irrelevant.

¶ At the end of his trip. President Coolidge stood above the Grand Canyon. Observers wondered whether a man whose greatest quality of tact was a stubborn silence, often ill-timed, would now fit the circumstances so as to be impressive. After regarding the canyon for several minutes, the President wisely sighted a telescope on the opposite side, the bottom of the canyon, birds wheeling below him in the air.

¶ After the Canyon inspection, Mrs. Coolidge, in informal dress, danced, probably for the first time in five years, at a public dance in the lounge of the Grand Canyon Hotel. First she circled the room with her son; then with Col. Blanton Winship, the President’s military aide. After that with Horace Albright, park superintendent. Then with W. M. Nichols, Yellowstone Park Hotel Corp. official.

¶ The trip from the Canyon to Cody, on the return to Black Hills, the President made in an automobile, proceeding along the famed Cody road. The picayune limousine in which he sat crawled up edges of huge and jagged mountains, reached finally the height of 9,000 feet above sea level. Never before, President Coolidge stated, had he climbed so high.

¶ At Sheridan, Wyoming, the Presidential Special halted. To the crowd which elbowed to the back platform, Senator John B. Kendrick of Wyoming announced, with a gesture to the President, who was standing beside him: “I take great pleasure in introducing to you his Excellency the Honorable Calvin Coolidge, our President.” The President wished to make no speech, sought therefore to engage the Senator in a conversation aside. He said in a low voice, “Is this your town, Senator?” “Yes, this is Sheridan,” quickly said the Senator without turning; then, as Mrs. Coolidge, swathed in a gaudy Indian blanket, appeared, “I now want to introduce to you the First Lady in the Land, but the most gracious lady in any land.” Still eager to have the Senator do all the talking, the President whispered hopefully: “Do you have irrigation here?” This time the Senator did not even answer, but informed his audience that, “We assured the President that if he would come we would relieve him of the responsibility of making any speeches.” The crowd laughed, called for John Coolidge. “I’ll try to get him,” said Mrs. Coolidge, “he’s a little shy. I haven’t been able to get him out today at all.” A minute later she reappeared on the platform with her son. The crowd cheered them both and the President smiled happily.

¶ The morning after the trip to Yellowstone Park began, the Coolidge train stopped at the town of Billings, Mont. Here a small child, Mary Wiggenhorn, was lifted up to the platform of the train on which stood Mrs. Coolidge. In her small sticky hand, Mary Wiggenhorn held a brooch, ornamented by a moss-agate. This, her tiny imploring face twisted into worried lines, she extended to Mrs. Coolidge. “Take it!” she whispered, then began to cry. Mrs. Coolidge took it, bent over and kissed Mary Wiggenhorn. “That’s all right, dear,” she said. “It nearly made me cry too.”

¶ One afternoon President and Mrs. Coolidge went fishing in different lakes. Mrs. Coolidge returned after two hours, patiently waited dinner till she saw the President strolling back through the summer twilight. When he came in she was smiling as she held up her catch of five murderous-looking cut-throat trout. “Where are yours?” she asked. President Coolidge displayed his string of six. “I got almost as many as you did and you worked three times as long,” remarked Mrs. Coolidge, smiling. But the President reminded Mrs. Coolidge that three-quarters of his fishing time had been wasted in riding to and fro in a motor boat. Generously, Mrs. Coolidge agreed.

Her trout were then broiled and eaten, after which the three Coolidges went downstairs. Here a dance was in progress, which they surveyed with interest. After the ball was over, Mrs. Coolidge and John Coolidge listened while one Dick Campbell*regaled the company with songs and burlesques.†Encouraged to a high pitch of impudence by cheers and clapping, young Campbell proceeded to imitate Mrs. Coolidge to the accompaniment of applause which in-cluded her own.

¶ A recent luncheon guest at the Black Hills White House related** the following conversation:

“Mr. Coolidge,” said the guest, “you must get a great many important despatches from Washington out here. How do they come—by air mail?”

“Special pouch.” Mr. Coolidge spoke without looking up.

“Oh, yes,” put in Mrs. Coolidge with a smile, “we get a great deal of mail—even books and magazines if we write for them.”

“Not,” said the President firmly in reply, “by special pouch.”

“Oh, no,” said Mrs. Coolidge, “I didn’t mean they came by special pouch.” “You implied it,” said the President.

* The official cheer of this sorority: Ring, ching, ching. Ho, hippy, hi. Ra, ro, arrow, Pi Beta Phi.

*Son of onetime (1916-17, 1919-23) Governor of Arizona Thomas Edward Campbell.

†Such entertainments are provided by members of the staff at various Yellowstone camps. The staffs are composed for most part of college students, male & female, of whom 700 are chosen from twice that number of applicants; famed for their sprightly behavior, they are called, collectively, “the savages.”

**To the New Yorker, humorous weekly published in Manhattan, which cataloged the conversation as “another illustration of our President’s amazing verbal frugality but, at the same time, evidence that he will spare a few words to keep the records straight.”