VALENTINE'S MANUAL

England parlor, or as near the middle as the great central
wood-burning stove with its vent througli the ceiling would
permit, and with framed newspaper photographs and car-
toons of the President and his family pasted to the book-
cases and the walls.

It was seventeen minutes before three o'clock in the
morning. In that farmhouse there was no electric light.
Kerosene lamps were the only illumination, and even they
were weak. A few moments before the oath had been
administered Mrs. Coolidge, hanging on the words of her
spouse, heard him complain about an insufficiency of
light.

"Wait a minute, Cal," said she, "I'U get the lamp from
the bedroom."

That was the nearest thing to a spotlight upon the in-
auguration of the thirtieth President of the United States.
Even the reporters were not there. They had hurried off
to telephone. It was only thirty minutes after he became
President, that telephone linemen, working through the
woods and over the Vermont hills, succeeded in installing
in this temporary White House the first telephone it has
known in all its long years.

And it will be many more long years before Plymouth,
Vt., forgets the night between the 2nd and the 3rd of
August, 1923. They still go to bed early in Plymouth
and thereabouts. This neighborhood knows not the rattle
of the flivver, the flicker of the movie or the dingle of the
telephone. Like all the rest of the world, it had been
reassured by Thursday's earlier bulletins on President
Harding's recovery. By 9 o'clock Thursday night the
Coolidge household was abed, lights were out and, country
fashion, folks were sleeping against the call for early
morning chores.

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