LOVE IN A HURRY

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 329, 14 April 1928, Page 21

LOVE IN A HURRY

Woodrow Wilson's Courtship OFFICIAL BIOGRAPHY THE story of Woodrow Wilson’s courting is charmingly told in the first volume of the official biography of President Wilson, written by Ray Standard Baker. Mrs. Wilson—whose devoted nursing of the President during the distressing illness is so well remembered —was Miss Ellen Axson, a daughter of the Manse in the Southern State of Georgia.

"rpHE first time I saw your face to note it,” wrote Wilson in one of his love letters before they were married, “was in church one morning during the first of my last spring’s visits to Rome (Georgia)—in April, wasn't it? “You wore a heavy crepe veil, and I remember thinking, ‘What a bright, happy face; -what splendid mischievous laughing eyes! I’ll lay a wager that this demure little lady has lots of fun In her!’ And when, after the service (I think it had heen a communion service), you spoke to Mrs.

Bones, T took another good look at you, and concluded that it would be a very clever plan to inquire your name and seek ail introduction. . . . He summoned you to the parlour. Do you remember? —and do you remember the topic of conversation? How your father made me ‘tackle’ that question that was so much too big for me, ‘Why have night congregations grown so small?’ ” Long Walks, Longer Talks It was a fast and furious courtship; there were long walks and longer talks, and “boat rides” and picnics. Wilson “could not keep away”; lie “had to call every afternoon.” Among the five tons of documents, numbering about 250,000, which Mr. Stannard Baker has had to handle, were some 1,200 that passed between Woodrow Wilson and his wife, beginning in 1883 and continuing for 30 years. “To the end they were love letters.” He was never away from home more than a day without writing to her, the biographer records, writing often at great length. Mrs. Wilson “influenced his life at many critical moments. To an extraordinary extent she protected him, guided him, established the environment. in which his intense nature could best function. ‘I am the only one who can rest him,’ she told a friend. ‘My salvation,’ he once told her, ‘is in being loved.’ ” The present volumes of the biography only carry the story down to the middle of 1910, when Wilson ended his stormy presidency of Princeton University.