I’m home from a month of perfect climate in the sandhills of North Carolina, where I am preparing a farm and building a home at least for winter use; and I had the most instructive and interesting month of my life there.  I believe I see, even in my life-time, the coming of a kind of man and a kind of life that shall come pretty near to being the model American citizen and the model American way to live.  Half of it is climate; a fourth of it occupation; the other fourth, companionship.  And the climate (with what it does) is three fourths companionship.

Then I came to Washington and saw Wilson made President—­a very impressive experience indeed.  The future—­God knows; but I believe in Wilson very thoroughly.  Men fool him yet.  Men fool us all.  He has already made some mistakes.  But he’s sound.  And, if we have moral courage enough to beat back the grafters, little and big—­I mean if we, the people, will vote two years and four years hence, to keep them back, I think that we shall now really work toward a democratic government.  I have a stronger confidence in government now as an instrument of human progress than I have ever had before.  And I find it an exhilarating and exciting experience.

I have seen many of your good friends in North Carolina, Virginia, and Washington.  How we all do love you, old man!  Don’t forget that, in your successful fight.  And, with my affectionate greetings to Mrs. Alderman, ask her to send me the news of your progress.

     Always affectionately yours,

     WALTER H. PAGE.

     To Edwin A. Alderman

     On the Baltic, New York to Liverpool,

     May 19, 1913.

     MY DEAR ED ALDERMAN: 

It was the best kind of news I heard of you during my last weeks at home—­every day of which I wished to go to Briarcliff to see you.  At a distance, it seems absurd to say that it was impossible to go.  But it was.  I set down five different days in my calendar for this use; and somehow every one of them was taken.  Two were taken by unexpected calls to Washington.  Another was taken by my partners who arranged a little good-bye dinner.  Another was taken by the British Ambassador—­and so on.  Absurd—­of course it was absurd, and I feel now as if it approached the criminal.  But every stolen day I said, “Well, I’ll find another.”  But another never came.

But good news of you came by many hands and mouths.  My congratulations, my cheers, my love, old man.  Now when you do take up work again, don’t take up all the work.  Show the fine virtue called self-restraint.  We work too much and too hard and do too many things even when we are well.  There are three titled Englishmen who sit at the table with me on this ship—­one a former Lord Mayor of London, another a peer, and the third an M.P.  Damn their self-sufficiencies!  They do excite