Free The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt by Eleanor Roosevelt Page A

of feeling which was entirely inadmissible.
    You never allowed a man to give you a present except flowers or candy or possibly a book. To receive a piece of jewelry from a man to whom you were not engaged was a sign of being a fast woman, and the idea that you would permit any man to kiss you before you were engaged to him never even crossed my mind.
    I had painfully high ideals and a tremendous sense of duty entirely unrelieved by any sense of humor or any appreciation of the weaknesses of human nature. Things were either right or wrong to me, and I had had too little experience to know how fallible human judgments are.
    I had a great curiosity about life and a desire to participate in every experience that might be the lot of a woman. There seemed to me to be a necessity for hurry; without rhyme or reason I felt the urge to be a part of the stream of life, and so in the autumn of 1903, when Franklin Roosevelt, my fifth cousin once removed, asked me to marry him, though I was only nineteen, it seemed entirely natural and I never even thought that we were both young and inexperienced. I came back from Groton, where I had spent the weekend, and asked Cousin Susie whether she thought I cared enough, and my grandmother, when I told her, asked me if I was sure I was really in love. I solemnly answered “yes,” and yet I know now that it was years later before I understood what being in love or what loving really meant.
    I had high standards of what a wife and mother should be and not the faintest notion of what it meant to be either a wife or a mother, and none of my elders enlightened me. I marvel now at my husband’s patience, for I realize how trying I must have been in many ways. I can see today how funny were some of the tragedies of our early married life.
    My mother-in-law had sense enough to realize that both of us were young and undeveloped, and she decided to try to make her son think this matter over—which, at the time, of course, I resented. As he was well ahead in his studies, she took him with his friend and roommate, Lathrop Brown, on a cruise to the West Indies that winter, while I lived in New York with Mrs. Parish.
    Franklin’s feelings did not change, however.
    My first experience with the complications that surround the attendance of a president at any kind of family gathering, such as a wedding or a funeral, came when my great-uncle, James King Gracie, whose wife was our beloved Auntie Gracie, died on November 22, 1903, and Uncle Ted came to New York for the funeral.
    The streets were lined with police, and only such people as had identification cards could get in and out of Mrs. Douglas Robinson’s house, where Uncle Ted stayed. We all drove down in a procession to the church, but Uncle Ted went in by a special door through the clergyman’s house, which had a connecting passageway, and left the same way.
    Only afterwards did we hear with horror that, in spite of all the precautions, an unknown man stepped up to Uncle Ted in the passageway and handed him a petition. No one could imagine how the man got in or why he had not been seen by the police. Fortunately, he had no bad intentions, but he gave everyone a shock, for had he wanted to attack Uncle Ted he could have done so easily.
    In the winters of 1903 and 1904, Auntie Bye, with whom I had already stayed in Farmington, Connecticut, asked me to come to Washington to stay with her. By this time I had gained a little self-confidence and so I really enjoyed meeting the younger diplomats and the few young American men who were to be found in the social circles of Washington. I was invited to the White House to stay for a night, but I was always awed by the White House and therefore preferred to stay with Auntie Bye, where one felt more at ease. She arranged everything so well for me that I did not feel responsible for myself.
    I went with Auntie Bye on her rounds of afternoon calls, and though I was aghast at this obligation, I found it entertaining. The