For there was only one reason why Page did not enter the Cabinet as Secretary of the Interior; and that is revealed in the above letter to “Uncle Henry”; he was so busy planning his new house in the sandhills of North Carolina that, while cabinets were being formed and great decisions taken, he was absent from New York.  A short time before the inauguration, Mr. Wilson asked Colonel House to arrange a meeting with Page in the latter’s apartment.  Mr. Wilson wished to see him on a Saturday; the purpose was to offer him the Secretaryship of the Interior.  Colonel House called up Page’s office at Garden City and was informed that he was in North Carolina.  Colonel House then telegraphed asking Page to start north immediately, and suggesting the succeeding Monday as a good time for the interview.  A reply was at once received from Page that he was on his way.

Meanwhile certain of Mr. Wilson’s advisers had heard of the plan and were raising objections.  Page was a Southerner; the Interior Department has supervision over the pension bureau, with its hundreds of thousands of Civil War veterans as pensioners; moreover, Page was an outspoken enemy of the whole pension system and had led several “campaigns” against it.  The appointment would never do!  Mr. Wilson himself was persuaded that it would be a mistake.

“But what are we going to do about Page?” asked Colonel House.  “I have summoned him from North Carolina on important business.  What excuse shall I give for bringing him way up here?”

But the President-elect was equal to the emergency.

“Here’s the cabinet list,” he drily replied.  “Show it to Page.  Tell him these are the people I have about decided to appoint and ask him what he thinks of them.  Then he will assume that we summoned him to get his advice.”

When Page made his appearance, therefore, Colonel House gave him the list of names and solemnly asked him what he thought of them.  The first name that attracted Page’s attention was that of Josephus Daniels, as Secretary of the Navy.  Page at once expressed his energetic dissent.

“Why, don’t you think he is Cabinet timber?” asked Colonel House.

“Timber!” Page fairly shouted.  “He isn’t a splinter!  Have you got a time table?  When does the next train leave for Princeton?”

In a couple of hours Page was sitting with Mr. Wilson, earnestly protesting against Mr. Daniels’s appointment.  But Mr. Wilson said that he had already offered Mr. Daniels the place.

II

About the time of Wilson’s election a great calamity befell one of Page’s dearest friends.  Dr. Edwin A. Alderman, the President of the University of Virginia, one of the pioneer educational forces in the Southern States, and for years an associate of Page on the General Education Board, was stricken with tuberculosis.  He was taken to Saranac, and here a patient course of treatment happily restored