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It was a large party of twenty or so - the usual Washington dinner party. He couldn't have been more agreeable. He was a Southern gentleman, after all. In a very unctuous, formal and perhaps slightly pompous way he was very attractive and very agreeable. I think I was the ranking lady and he took me into dinner. If I didn't sit on his right, at any rate, I sat on his left. He was very courteous, but also having that slightly patronizing quality of courtesy that often goes with an old-fashioned gentleman in his attempts to be friendly and courteous to a younger woman of the modern generation who participates as an equal in conversations. He was patronizing on a man-woman basis, not on a Court-Cabinet basis. It was a slightly patronizing air which would have been perfectly accessible to the idea that, of course, “the poor little thing doesn't really know about these matters and I won't press her too hard.” That didn't gall me particularly, because I was accustomed to it. I was able to note it when I saw it. That was all. It no longer irritated me. I had met a good deal of that in the course of a lifetime. I was just able to note it.

But he was very agreeable and a very pleasant dinner companion, although my previous encounters with him had been mostly at semi-official occasions when