It is certainly annoying to feel perfectly miserable and yet not be really ill! For two days now that has been my condition, a certain amount of temperature but nothing which could serve as an excuse for the temperature and no real reason to consider oneself an invalid. This time I think it is going to wear itself out before it wears me out, for today the temperature has more or less departed, and I feel quite able to take an interest in my fellow human beings.

I came up to the surface sufficiently yesterday afternoon to discuss at some length various abstract questions of government and business, and sometimes I wonder if we believed all the pessimistic things that we hear whether we would ever have the courage to go ahead and try anything new.

We had a family luncheon party today with only one guest but there was plenty of interest in the conversation for the guest is a gentleman with ideas and ideals and the family is always ready to argue which is conducive to conversation but which also takes up a good deal of time and before I knew it my first afternoon appointment was upon me.

Crystal Bird Fauset, who is one of the more intelligent, level headed of the younger group of colored women who are really constantly working to improve the condition of their people, came to see me to talk over certain matters of interest in the development of good feeling and mutual understanding between women of different racial back ground.

Then my next appointment, three very charming ladies from North Carolina who want me to come to their part of the state the latter part of May for their Strawberry Festival, and visit the homestead projects down there at that time.

In a few minutes the first of two teas will begin.

My part of the mail has not been so heavy for the last few days, but the Inauguration plans are weighing very heavily on Mrs. Helm's mind, and I think she was very happy to find that I was not going out this morning so she could really have an opportunity to talk everything out.

Judge Kernochan's death in New York has been a blow to my husband for they were associated in many ways together. His wife was a Miss Howland whose grandmother, Madame Howland in Paris, was a connection of my husband's and much admired by both my husband and his mother.