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her to drop her spectacles, persuaded her to do something a little bit different with her clothes and get the Iowa look off, get a more metropolitan look on, which she did very well indeed. Once she saw the effect of dropping the spectacles she was very complacent about it.

However, she had learned by this time how to receive a hundred ladies, how to say the right thing to everybody. That's the conventional thing but many people freeze on just saying, “How nice of you to come,” and so forth. Mrs. Truman used to freeze on that. It nearly killed her to learn to say something pleasant, but really nothing. Ilo had learned that, however. I don't think she was a fascinating conversationalist if she was your dinner partner. I'm sure that Harold Ickes would never accuse her of talking too much when he sat beside her at dinner, but she was very presentable and very agreeable socially at a large tea. She showed that she could receive five hundred people agreeably and pleasantly, just as a President's or Vice President's wife has to. In other words, she was fit to be the wife of a man in high office. So we had great pleasure doing that, because it was obvious that they thought Ilo was very attractive and very pleasant.