Page:The autobiography of a Pennsylvanian.djvu/498

 At a reception in Cambridge, Massachusetts, two years later, at which my sister-in-law was present, he shouted across the room:

“I know something about the Pennypackers that you don't know. They sent one hundred and forty-eight men into the war.” The cards, invitations, programmes and photographs relating to his inauguration and my participation in it will be found among my papers.

At the inauguration ball in the evening it pleased me that Mrs. Roosevelt did not need an introduction and to hear her say to Mrs. Pennypacker, “Your husband was so good to my little girl.”

In the spring of 1906, a large delegation of state senators and representatives, on behalf of the state, went with me to Washington to invite the President to deliver the oration at the dedication of the state capitol the ensuing autumn. Senators Penrose and Knox accompanied us. To me was left the burden of making the persuading speech. I had written a formal letter of invitation suggesting that we would make every effort to accommodate ourselves to his wishes and would let him designate the day. He accepted and selected the fourth day of October, which happened to be the anniversary of the reunion in 1877 of the Pennypacker family at Pennypacker's Mills. After he had received us and heard me he dismissed the delegation and asked Penrose and Knox and myself to come into his private room in the annex to the White House, as there was a matter of importance about which he wanted to talk to us. Closing the doors, he turned to me and said in effect that he had information from reliable sources that there was going to be another great coal strike in the course of the coming summer, that he gave me warning in advance, so that I might be prepared, and that he would like me to enter into communication with him on the first appearance of difficulty. At that moment he and I set our faces in different directions. It was in 478