"I find they're all for it down there. Mahrug is over 20 miles from Darter, the county seat. Three big creeks separate them from it. You can't ford them in high water. And one or the other of them is nearly always high. They're all mud roads and hard enough to get over in dry weather, and when it's wet or raining you have to take to the sides. Nine months in the year you can't get over them, only on a horse."
He paused. The Governor was leaning forward in his chair, beaming at him.
"Go on, Senator!" the Governor urged. "You are stating some very salient and important facts. Those are what I want to hear if I am to be of any assistance. Facts that go to the very heart of the question! Go right ahead!"
The Senator was both pleased and encouraged. He wanted the Governor's good opinion. He desired to "stand in" with him. He had a little bill up himself that his County Chairman was interested in getting passed. And if it got past the Senate and House he wanted the Governor's signature without any quibbling. Governors sometimes vetoed bills. He had heard it said if you knew a Governor rather intimately, there wasn't so much danger of a veto. Governors were that way.
He cleared his throat and proceeded. "There is considerable litigation over around Mahrug, from what they say, from horse stealing on down. An apple jack still house down on Muskrat Creek causes considerable trouble. Most of it is only hand and club fighting amongst the boys and men there in the neighborhood, but there's coming to be more cutting and shooting lately. The authorities down at Darter are so far away they don't pay much attention to it, or just don't care."
"They are coming in from Kentucky and other places, and land trading is pretty brisk and on the boom, and every time they make a trade they've got to go to the county seat to get the deeds made. . . My investigation shows me the people down there want a court house, they need it, they ought to have it, and I say give it to them."
"That was a . . . most enlightening and instructive dissertation on the very meat of the question," said the Governor. "And you Senator?" He swung around a trifle to face the Minority member. "Well," he began in a hesitating way, "Some say they need it and some say they don't. . . Some of the boys on our side say there's politics . . . ."
"We can't help what some of them say," interrupted the Governor with a slight frown of annoyance. "What do you say."
". . .As I started to say, our Floor Leader is dead set against it. The counties they're cutting this new county out of are kicking like bay steers," (He noticed the Governor learning forward) "but the people in the new county want it, no doubt about that a-tall . . . ."
"There you are!" triumphantly exclaimed the Governor. "That's it exactly! The people in the new county want it just like the people in one of your counties want a separate court. And the people in the counties it is being taken away from don't want it, just like the people of your other counties, from which this new court district would be carved, don't want your one county to have it. Don't you see these two bills are alike? One is about one thing and the other is about another, but the principle is the same in both?"