The professor stared at me blankly.
“Nothing,” he said at length. “After all, we were boozing.”
This professor, I should add, was a man of the old American stock—in fact, a fellow very proud of his colonial ancestry. When he got back to his university he joined in signing a public statement that Prohibition was a great success there.
I proceed to another case. One day in the Summer of 1924, during the Republican National Convention at Cleveland, I met an eminent American publicist in a hotel lobby there. He told me at once that he was suffering from a dreadful bellyache. I had a jug in my room, but my own hotel was far away, so I suggested that help might be got from a journalist on the premises. We went to his room, and I introduced the publicist. The journalist promptly got out a bottle and gave him a policeman’s drink. The publicist had recovered in three minutes.... When he got home, he joined, like the professor, in signing a public statement praising Prohibition.
10
Note in the Margin of a Treatise on Psychology
As I stoop to lace my shoe you hit me over the coccyx with a length of hickory (Carya laciniosa). I conclude instantly that you are a jackass. This is a whole process of human thought in little. This also is free will.
11
Definition
Democracy is that system of government under which the people, having 35,717,342 native-born adult whites to choose from, including thousands who are handsome and many who are wise, pick out a Coolidge to be head of the State. It is as if a hungry man, set before a banquet prepared by master cooks and covering a table an acre in area, should turn his back upon the feast and stay his stomach by catching and eating flies.
XVIII. CATECHISM
Q. If you find so much that is unworthy of reverence in the United States, then why do you live here?