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and a sense of significance.
She came down to Washington very discouraged, very low in her mind and very blue. She would have nothing to do. She would be just the kind of a President's wife that President's wives always had been before. You sat in the parlor. You received the wives of diplomats. Then you received the wives of Supreme Court Justices. Then you received some other wives. So your days passed. That was all you did. You had to preside at big dinners, but it was just a very commonplace sort of a life. The last two years before they left Albany she'd been teaching in a school - the Todhunter School. She'd never done anything professionally before. That fascinated her. She'd had a greater number of social work agencies and activities.
But nobody had ever flattered her, except I think Nancy Cook and Marion Dickerman had flattered her about her teaching. I think that Hopkins and Aubrey Williams gave her a new idea that she didn't have to be locked up just receiving wives of diplomats and high officers of government, that she could help by her presence and obvious interest to support these programs and help develop them. Of course, they would go to her with the ususal flattery technique of asking for advice - “What would you advise us to do?” This is the most flattering
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