"I'

F we could annex Murray Bay, the summer plans of the President would be easily settled," was the remark a member of his family made to a friend last March. But Murray Bay, with all its quaint charms and beautiful scenery, could not well be appropriated even temporarily. Moreover, the simple cottage, with its single partitions of rough boards and a place for Mr. Taft's desk at the back of the small and constantly traversed hall, which proved a happy summer . home for Mr. Taft while Secretary of War, was hardly suitable for the President of the United States. It is true that, with his frank nature, he was not troubled by the fact that the entire household could hear the contents of his letters as he dictated them to a secretary in the early morning hours. When questioned on the famous Philippine trip, as to why he had included

four Senators of the Democratic party and only three of the Republican, he replied: "If our policy in the Philippines cannot stand the investigation of our opponents, it is a policy that had better be given up.' Such a character is not annoyed by publicity and has no fear of eavesdroppers. Nevertheless, the dignity of the Presidential office requires a summer home that is suitable for the Chief Magistrate of this country.

President Taft, when he first went to the Philippines, sold his house in Cincinnati, and so, being possessed of no rooftree he can call his home, it became necessary to find some convenient place for his family and for himself, when he could join them, to pass the few hot summer weeks. What more natural than that he should turn to New England? Massachusetts was his mother's native State.

From his boyhood he was familiar with her scenes and felt at home within her borders. One of the summers of his early married life was passed at Magnolia, and the loveliness of the North Shore had never been forgotten. During the campaign of last year he was heard to say that, after his own. State, he would rather carry Massachusetts than any other, and splendidly did the old Bay State respond to the wish of one who may well be called her grandson.

James Russell Lowell, in one of his letters, says of Beverly: "Find the Yankee word for Sorrento and you have Beverly; it is only the Bay of Naples translated into New England. dialect." Even allowing for poetic license in the thought, there is but small truth in the comparison. These gently rounded hills bear faint resemblance to the volcanic cliffs over which. Vesuvius frowns; the oaks, the pines, and the hemlocks that rise above the red rocks of the North Shore are little

I MISS HELEN TAFT

ranean.

Just across the old Essex Bridge beyond Salem, that town of witch renown, lies Beverly, on the "Cape-An-Side," as the old records call it. Once on the Cape

CHARLES TAFT IN THE BANDIT

itself, there is a coolness in the very thought that only a few miles north from the southern coast, with its wooded shores, where the trees wander down to the ocean's brink, lies again the open sea with bleaker sand-dunes, long stretches of white beaches, and Castle Neck looking away to the Isle of Shoals. When President Taft motored into Boston, he probably little thought that, more than a hundred years

ago, Washington, the first President, as he, the last, crossed this same old bridge on his way to inspect the first cotton factory in the country, making the journey in some slow and stately high-swung coach of those old days.

A house suitable for the President's use was not easily to be discovered. The finding of such a place the President left entirely to Mrs. Taft's good judgment. The house she finally selected lies on a point of land jutting out into Beverly Cove at the entrance to Salem Harbor. The Presi