Mrs. Smith's Week

The round, placid, motherly lady who was Katie Dunn of the Bronx, then Mrs. Smith of Oliver Street, then the wife of Assemblyman Smith, then a four-time Governor's wife and finally a candidate for First Lady of the Land, emerged from her husband's friend's private car and smiled contentedly at Houston. Newsgatherers waiting at her hotel were soon handed a mimeographed statement by the lady's experienced secretary, Miss Rose Pedrick.

"There is really nothing for me to say," said the mimeograph. "My trip from Albany was very enjoyable. . . . True Southern hospitality. ... I am not a politician. I have devoted my entire life to my home and family. ... I will return home as soon as the convention adjourns."

The newsgatherers drew Mrs. Smith out to tell about her husband's telephoning her from Albany. "He didn't say much," she said. "I just asked him about the family and he told me they were all well, and then he asked me how we were all feeling. I just told him that we all felt fine. Yes, indeed, it was nice to talk to him again."

(By way of opening the conversation, Governor Smith sang the first bars of My Heart's Tonight in Texas, Down on the Rio Grande. He telephoned daily.)

Around Mrs. Smith in her box at Sam Houston Hall, at various times, sat: Mrs. John G. Glynn of Brooklyn, her comfortable-looking sister-in-law; Alfred E. Smith Jr., her slim, blond, curly, eldest son, a lawyer; Mrs. Catherine Smith Quillinan, her newly wed younger daughter; Arthur Smith, her middle son; Eddie Dowling, musical comedian; Tex Rickard, promoter. Mrs. Smith wore jade jewelry, waved a magenta fan. She said she did not feel the heat. When Chairman Robinson touched on religious tolerance, she looked moved. When Nominator Roosevelt told what a fine man her husband was she looked proud, grateful. When the convention had voted, she drew out a green silk handkerchief and waved it. She let them put a Hawaiian lei around her neck. Her secretary suggested that she hold the New York delegation's state standard. It was passed up to the bo:: and she held it, beaming. Newsgatherers implored her to say something and with tears on her plump cheeks she said: "This is the happiest moment of my life, to find that others appreciate the Governor as I do." They tried to put a baby donkey into her arms. "Send it up to Albany," she said, laughing and crying at the same time. She dispensed scores of autographs, shook hundreds of hands, nodded answer to a thousand salutes. She went straight home to Albany, with only one brief stopover, in St. Louis, to take tea with President Lewis Warrington Baldwin of the Missouri Pacific R. R. It was really a very simple experience, during which Mrs. Smith at no time seemed nonplussed. She had, after all, undergone the same sort of thing several times before. Mrs. Charles Dana (Irene Langhorne) Gibson, who was present as a special sort of Tammany delegate, left nothing to chance, however, and made a statement to the press. It was after a visit paid by Mrs. Smith to Mrs. Woodrow Wilson at the Jesse Holman Joneses'. Said Mrs. Gibson, whose sister, as everyone knows, is Lady Astor: "You needn't worry about Mrs. Smith in the White House or anywhere else. "That's a great little lady. She has perfect poise, gentleness, kindliness of heart, all the really fine qualities which we women want in the White House.

"Mrs. Smith has borne the ordeal of these first few days in the South with a charming poise that I feel sure never deserts her."