Life — April 19, 1928 — page 15: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The President Some time after noon on March th next ex-President Coolidge will depart from Washington in Drawing Room A ‘of a New England- bound express. Even the New York World will-éomment on his excel-~ lence, and thus will this. strange fig- ure return to private life, after hav- ing occupied more offices, State and Federal, than any other man with the exception of William H. Taft. _ L have a theory that Mr. Cool- idge will leave the White House without regret, which is more than can be said of many of his predeces- ‘ors, to whom pomp and power have proved habit-forming drugs. Mr. Coolidge became President through an act of God, and he has since be- haved with a deep humility that in- dicates grateful appreciation of the somewhat fickle largesse of Heaven. NE of the most notable things about the President is his dig- nity. There has been no three-ring circus at the Executive office since 1923. He has insisted that appro- priate flourishes shall be blown on trumpets, that salutes shall be fired where salutes are indicated, and that guests at his table shall be seated according to the strictest rules of precedence. A diplomatic secretary from the Department of State was imported to see that everything that happened in Mr. Coolidge’s neigh- borhood was according to protocole. | The former Mayor of Northampton, having become President of the United States, went Hapsburg. LL this is due, not to any delusions of grandeur on Mr. Coolidge’s part, but to the fact that he has be- | lieved, in his methodical and } logical way, in the dignity of the office. He himself has gone through all the formal motions imposed upon him with a pained expression of discomfiture. I stood above him aboard U. S. S. Texas when he sailed into Havana Harbor, and Mr. Coolidge was not happy. The muz- tes flashed ‘and bands played, but Mr. Coolidge stood rigid and ill at ease, with his high hat. on. his; : chest—a solitary figure veiled. . f / penn \ Not a Car in a Cartoan in blue smoke, doing his duty. He is too conscientious to enjoy being President, too aware of the pressure of small things. The intoxication of experiment, the unction of triumph and the sting of defeat have not been for him. He has kept his views to himself, and now and then sprung a veto, but for the most part he has sat solitary in that strange area that he calls the “province of the Execu- tive.” Mr. Coolidge has no intimate friends, plays no games, hears no music, seldom goes to a theatre, in- dulges in no regular relaxation. Now and then some Vermont or Massa- chusetts neighbors visit him, but otherwise his guests are politicians : Fo He: This lamb seems a little tough. Sue: Oh, let’s not talk chop. or editors of party organs. Some- times, of an afternoon, the President will walk down F Street and gaze into the shop windows. Sometimes he will make a joke with newspaper correspondents. Sometimes he will pose on the back lawn with a con- vention. Sometimes he will drop down the Potomac, usually after go- ing to church on Sunday morning, aboard U. S. S. Mayflower for a solemn week-end. I Mr. Coolidge has derived any vital enjoyment from being Presi- dent of the United States, he h. kept his pleasure carefully conceale: He is a person of intense reserve, conscious of himself, afraid of manifesting an impulse. The grand manner is not his. There is a great deal more to him than reveals itself even to somewhat intimate observation. With the pas- sage of years and the eluci- dation of some things now hidden, Mr. Coolidge will offer a marvelous subject for biographers. But his qualities are primarily neg- , and caution in time s to be much fun. So I think he means to go, and that he will be glad to leave the Marine Band, his satin flag and the sound of twenty- one guns behind him. Henry Suydam. comicbooks.com