"I could take my body off this row any minute, but the only way to get my mind off it is to go to its end."
He bound the last bundle and then we walked together toward the house, the Senator carrying his sickle.
"I shall introduce you to the President," he said as we neared our destination. "Then perhaps you had better leave us."
At home we had read much about the new President and regarded him with deep veneration. In general I knew the grounds of it—his fight against the banks for using public funds for selfish purposes and "swapping mushrats for mink" with the government, as uncle put it, by seeking to return the same in cheapened paper money; his long battle for the extension of the right of suffrage in our state; his fiery eloquence in debate. Often I had heard Uncle Peabody say that Van Buren had made it possible for a poor man to vote in York State and hold up his head like a man. So I was deeply moved by the prospect of seeing him.
I could not remember that I had ever been "introduced" to anybody. I knew that people put their wits on exhibition and often flung down a "snag" by way of demonstrating their fitness for the honor, when they were introduced in books. I remember asking rather timidly:
"What shall I say when—when you—introduce me?"
"Oh, say anything that you want to say," he answered with a look of amusement.
"I'm kind o' scared," I said.
"You needn't be—he was once a poor boy just like you."
"Just like me!" I repeated, thoughtfully, for while I had heard a good deal of that kind of thing in our home, it had not, somehow, got under my jacket, as they used to say.