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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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tense and screwed up around the mouth. His upper lip pulled down and his lower lip sort of pursed in, an expression that I've seen him have many, many times. It's associated in my mind with different kinds of situations in his life. Sometimes I've seen it on his face when he was not particularly pleased or proud of a situation in which he found himself, either by his own doings, or somebody else's. Sometimes I've seen it on his face when he was carrying through a plan which not everybody in the room approved of and about which he didn't intend to tell too much. I've seen it on his face at times when I thought he was not making everything quite clear and open personally, when he was not exposing the total situation. It was the sort of expression that he sometimes used when people were making recommendations to him and he was saying, “Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes,” without the slighest intention of doing anything about it. The “Oh yes”, was merely a way of saying, “I hear what you say.” I've seen that when he didn't mean to do anything about the suggestion and have been sorry that the person who was making the suggestion didn't realize that.

In other words, there have been times when I associated that expression with a kind of evasiveness. The fact that he wore his expression all evening means nothing. It was an observation from which I cannot rid my memory. My picture memory keeps that expression on his face throughout the evening. He never relaxed the expression once, and none of





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