In the American Jungle by Waldo David Frank

In the literary office of a certain magazine there is a vast table piled with books. "Mostly junk," the editor will explain. My hand feathers the outskirts and picks a volume with title: "Calvin Coolidge. His First Biography. " I am not permitted to speak of it here. Nor shall I linger wistfully over the so symbolic circumstance that a book about a living President should be a thing void of ideas, vile in composition, rancid, and false in spirit. Within its covers, I found the portraits of two faces: one of the President and one of the President's mother. Thereby hangs my tale.

She was beautiful. She looks out at you in a black dress of satin, sterncuffed in white, high-collared, with a cameo at the throat. The hands lie demure in the lap. The hair is drawn tight and sideways to the ears. She looks out at you, not so much from the frontispiece of a book as from New England.