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Frances PerkinsFrances Perkins
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Even if they weren't in the Cathedral, if they were outside. And the grounds could have been full and so forth.

But as it was, all that there was was this procession from the train to the White House. I guess they moved his body on a gun-carriage, and that went into the White House grounds, and that was that. Of course the members of the Cabinet rode behind in their cars. Now, of course, I'm accustomed to following my dead on foot, the way we do, in the good old-fashioned way. But I know it isn't done much any more.

It would have been a good and simple and proper and natural arrangement. I suppose it isn't done.

We all went into the train. We went down to meet it. And we all spoke to Mrs. Roosevelt. She bore up fine. She was strong. She's a very strong woman, you see. She was, shall I say, tensed to the situation. But Grace Tully and people like that were dissolved in tears. Grace couldn't master that kind of strength for the moment. Two or three of the other people who were with him then--the old colored woman who went down as his chambermaid--she couldn't resist speaking to everybody and saying, “Oh, he was so beautiful. Such a lovely patient. He was smiling to the end, the very end,” and that kind of thing.

They came out and got in their cars, and the body was





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