“The first thing I want to ask,” said he, “is whether that old woman was a real person or a figment of your imagination?”
“She was a figment of my imagination,” I answered, “but you put her out of business with a single punch. Why didn’t you hold back your statement a bit? If you had done so there was room for lots of sport ahead.”
He was in no mood for joking. “Henry Watterson,” he said, “I want to talk to you seriously about this third-term business. I will not deny that I have thought of the thing—thought of it a great deal.” Then he proceeded to relate from his point of view the state of the country and the immediate situation. He spoke without reserve of his relations to the nearest associated public men, of what were and what were not his personal and party obligations, his attitude toward the political questions of the moment, and ended by saying, “What do you make of all this?”
“Mr. President,” I replied, “you know that I am your friend, and as your friend I tell you that if you go out of here the fourth of next March placing your friend Taft in your place you will make a good third to Washington and Lincoln; but if you allow these wild fellows willy-nilly to induce you, in spite of your declaration, to accept the nomination, substantially for a third term, all issues will be merged in that issue, and in my judgment you will not carry a state in the Union.”
As if much impressed and with a show of feeling he said: “It may be so. At any rate I will not do it. If the convention nominates me I will promptly send my declination. If it nominates me and adjourns I will call it together again and it will have to name somebody else.”
As an illustration of the implacability which pursued him I may mention that among many leading Republicans to whom I related the incident most of them discredited his sincerity, one of them—a man of national importance—expressing the opinion that all along he was artfully playing for the nomination. This I do not believe. Perhaps he was never quite fixed in his mind. The presidency is a wondrous lure. Once out of the White House—what else and what——?
II
Upon his return from one of his several foreign journeys a party of some hundred or more of his immediate personal friends gave him a private dinner at a famous uptown restaurant. I was placed next him at table. It goes without saying that we had all sorts of a good time—he Cæsar and I Brutus—the prevailing joke the entente between the two.
“I think,” he began his very happy speech, “that I am the bravest man that ever lived, for here I have been sitting three hours by the side of Brutus—have repeatedly seen him clutch his knife—without the blink of an eye or the turn of a feature.”
To which in response when my turn came I said: “You gentlemen seem to be surprised that there should be so perfect an understanding between our guest and myself. But there is nothing new or strange in that. It goes back, indeed, to his cradle and has never been disturbed throughout the intervening years of political discussion—sometimes acrimonious. At the top of the acclivity of his amazing career—in the very plenitude of his eminence and power—let me tell you that he offered me one of the most honorable and distinguished appointments within his gift.”