“A Perfect Dear.”

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLIV, Issue 1, 5 January 1910, Page 52

“A Perfect Dear.”

As an orator, President Taft is winning more favour among the ladies than any of his many predecessors. During his grand tour of the United States, * the speeches of the President have been invariably garnished with chivalrous references to the fair sex. This gallantry has not been without its reward, for every woman in America proclaims Mr. Taft “a perfect dear.” The President has partaken of a barbecue prepared by 500 industrial school girls at Columbus, Mississippi. Despite the fact that the girls played him the cruel trick of barbecueing (roasting whole) a ’possum instead of a pig, he made a charming speech, telling them that his great ambition was to see every woman so situated in the world that she need not marry if she did not want to. This he followed with a confession of his own faith as a husband and a father. “I’m glad,” he said, “to have no property to leave to my two boys, but only good character, pride in themselves, and a good education. But for my daughter I am going to scrape together as much as I can to give her, so that she may follow the lesson I have sought to teach her—that she shall marry only whom she chooses to marry, and not because of circumstances.”