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Notable New     Yorkers
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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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occasionally, Gertrude and I did. Well, we went there frequently.

We walked into the Carleton. The lobby was full of people--you know, more than usual, and they were just kind of milling around, everybody looking wide-eyed and talking in hushed voices. It was just incredible. I mean, you couldn't stay there, you just felt you couldn't stay there at all.

I remember I tried to buy a paper. There wasn't any paper. They had been all sold out, but the girl said to me, “There's no news in the paper. The edition will be out--in twenty minutes there'll be a new edition here.”

Then we met a man in the lobby whom we both knew. Now, I cannot recall his name. I was trying to think of it the other night. Charles Taussig? Anyhow he had come to work for the New Deal and he had very largely solved its problems of Puerto Rico and Florida sugar interests. You remember what trouble there was there? And the President trusted him greatly. He was no professor. He was a businessman.

Anyhow, he saw us there. He was a lovely fellow. He was youngish, too, on the young side--oh, I don't know, not terribly young but perhaps forty-five to fifty. He saw us, of course, and rushed right up to us. We both took his hand. He was about shot to pieces, and he said to us, “You girls look simply dead.” I know we both looked white and drawn. He said, “I feel that way. I'm going up to my rooms. I have





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