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Show is mm mmii- W. II TAFTS MOTHER A. f , - "I do not want my son to be President; Presi-dent; be is not my candidate,' smilingly smil-ingly declared Mrs. Alphonso Taft, mother of Secretary of War W. XL Taft, yesterday. "A place on the Supreme bench, where my son would administer justice, jus-tice, is my ambition for him. His Is a judicial mind, yon know, and he lores the law. Added to these qualities he has (rood health and unfailing good nature?' na-ture?' Mrs. Taft, a tall, graceful matron of some seventy years, was attired in a handsome black embroidered gown, with a dainty cap of white, a woman of the old school, with whom traces of early beauty still remained. She is proud of her son's mental achievements and tells with pride of his record in school, his early boyhood, his graduation from the Cincinnati high school, his college days at Tale and then his admission te the bar. It is his record in the latter and his innate love for the law which causes her to prefer for him a Supreme justiceship jus-ticeship to- the highest position in the United States. "To be President would entail a very heavy responsibility, and the position is a very trying one. "He has not sought to be a candidate for it. It has been thrust upon him. I know that he himself does not want it: that his views are the same as mine." continued Mrs. Taft , . "Who is your candidate for President Presi-dent f" Mrs. Taft was asked. "Elihu Boot, ex-Secretary of State," she replied. "I know him personally and I consider him a fine man. I hope he will be the next President." Speaking again of W. H. Taft, her son, she said: "He is the oldest of a family of four. He will be 50 years old in September. I have three other children, Henry W., an attorney in a preparatory school for boVs in Connecticut, Con-necticut, and Mrs. W. A. Edwardes of Los Angeles. I lived in Cincinnati thirty years, and all my children were born there. They are true Buckeyes. Their father came from Vermont and I came from Worcester eounty, Mass., but nevertheless they are genuine Ohioans." Mrs. Taft seemed prouder of the fact that her children were Buckeyes Buck-eyes than of the success they have achieved. "Mr. Taft worries greatly about his weight," she continued. 'He was always al-ways a large boy, even when he went to college he was noted as -being the largest boy there. HeH has weighed as much as 350 pounds, but when I saw him in New York, just before I left, he was weighing 275 and was in hopes of reducing to 250. He is under the care of a famous specialist in London, with whom he corresponds regularly. With him corpulency is not a disease, as he has always been stout. It annoys him, however, that he eannot exercise." Speaking of the number of Tafts in Massachusetts, she said: "Massachusetts is the hotbed of Tafts. A few years ago at Uxbridge there was a gathering W the Tafts, at which my son presided. There was a large number of them, I assure you, and when they came to trace back they were all descendants of the same family." Mrs. Taft has a stepson, Charles P. Taft, in Cincinnati, of whom she is very proud. He is the proprietor of the Times-Star in that city. He is one of W. H. Taft's most loyal supporters. Mrs. Taft is visiting with her daughter, daugh-ter, Mrs. W. A. Edwardes, at 2600 Adams Ad-ams street. The father of W. H. Taft died in San Diego in 1890. and since that time Mrs. Taft has spent a great deal of time visiting vis-iting with her children and grandchildren. grandchil-dren. Mrs. Taft's home is now in Massachusetts, Massachu-setts, but her heart is loyal to Ohio. If there is one subject more than another that she loves to dwell on, it is of the State where she spent her early married mar-ried life and raised her children. All of her boys are Yale graduates, and of this fact, too, she is proud. No one who meets Mrs. Taft can help but admire her as a womanly woman, whose son's success has not turned her head a woman born to be the mother of a great man. |