Note 50 — Chapter Twenty-nine
Reading edition
... at a dinner given at the State Mansion in honor of a legation about to depart for Russia on a tour of observation, Dora, telling this story to a group of old Middleton and Centralia friends, stopped short in the middle of it, heavy tears over her eyes, and regarded my brother, the then Governor, quite helplessly, unable to proceed.
With his usual alertness to emergency, and his unfailing understanding of her, he picked up the story where she had left off, concluding it in a gale of merriment shared by the entire company.
Later, Dora confided to me that suddenly, the pathos of the memory of that boy back there, battling for her so absurdly and so valiantly through soapsuds, simply rose and choked her, making it impossible for her to conclude an anecdote to which the Governor always listened with the relish of hearing it for the first time.
It is characteristic of him that he never again asked her to tell the story, or repeated it in her presence.