NEW YORK, Tuesday—Yesterday was a busy day. First we said goodbye to a friend who is off on a Naval Reserve Cruise and then I went up to spend an hour with Mrs. William Brown Meloney, an ever courageous and ever inspiring friend.

Next I went to Mr. Douglas Chandor's studio on East 57th Street to see the portrait which he has painted of my daughter-in-law, Ruth, Elliott's wife. It is a charming portrait of a very charming young woman. He has caught her beauty and her sweetest expression, and there it is on canvas for her children to enjoy. We change with age, but beautiful portraits can remain to remind us of the days when youth radiated its own special charm all about us.

There is a portrait at Hyde Park of my mother-in-law as a young woman, done by Pierre Troubetzkoy, which is, I think, one of the most distinguished and beautiful paintings I have ever seen. It does full justice to a beauty which was then at its height. Today, next to the portrait of Ruth, Mr. Chandor has a portrait of my mother-in-law. The beauty of the young woman is still apparent so many years later. The face today is gentler, less rigid, but the lines of the aristocrat are still in evidence in spite of the passage of years.

Next to the two family portraits, there stood a portrait of Mr. Herbert Hoover, which is as good as any I have seen. On the easel nearby, the portrait of a small boy with his shirt open at the neck was arresting and made one want to know the child.

After the studio visit came a little Christmas shopping and then lunch with my cousin, Mrs. Henry Parish. Here an hour melted away and left me surprised to discover that I should have been at our house in 65th Street to meet the truck that was to take some cases of the President's papers up to Hyde Park.

At 4:15 I managed to come rather breathlessly into the Commodore Hotel to meet with some of the women who are taking part in forum discussion today at the Woman's Centennial Congress. I am supposed to preside and keep them all talking. I only hope I shall do it as well as Dr. Wirth did in the Chicago University Forum on the air last Sunday.

We had a rather hurried dinner last night and then we went to the Columbia Broadcasting Company where, in an empty studio, a group of young people met to discuss a new organization—The Committee of Thirty Million Young People. I think we could have spent many hours together and carried on an increasingly animated discussion about the function of youth organizations, but the studio in which we were, was needed at 10:00 o'clock, so we broke up and went about our various occupations. I came back to the apartment to devote a little time to my neglected mail.