When I saw President Chase a little while before he left for the beach, he was looking enviously at his secretary, Claude Currie. The occasion for the envy was that Claude Currie was smoking. Mr. Chase is just recovering from a serious operation, and his physician has forbidden him to smoke until July 15. He said he was looking forward to it as one of the red-letter days of the present epoch. As we discussed the doctor’s sentence, it occurred to me that the day of the President’s liberation was only one day later than the French national holiday, the anniversary of the Fall of the Bastille. I mentioned it and he suggested that it would be highly appropriate if his own punishment would come to an end on the great French day. I gathered, however, that, if the Bastille had happened to fall on the 16th instead of the 14th, he would have no enthusiasm for a change in the physician’s orders, and would be willing to let the historical coincidence pass unnoticed.
From the front page of the Chapel Hill Weekly, Friday, June 20, 1924
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