"When I go back home," said my friend from the Middle West, "and tell them about this they won't believe it."
CHAPTER XXVII
NOSING 'ROUND WASHINGTON
I
I CAME very near to being shot in the White House grounds the other day. Yep! You see, my friend is a bit on the order of what the modistes call "stylish stout." Rather more than a bit, indeed. Looks something like a slightly youthfuller Irvin Cobb. Also wouldn't consider it decent of him out of doors not to "wear" his stag-handled cane. Altogether, not unlikely to be taken for a real somebody. He was fishing round in his breast pocket for the letter his senator from "back home" had given him to the President's secretary. Drew out what may have seemed an important looking document.
As we came along the path toward the executive offices there was an up-stage looking bunch thronging about the little steps—rollicking gamins, smartly turned out flappers, a sprinkling of rather rakish looking young males, and (in their best black silk) a populous representation of those highly honorable and very ample figures who have generously mothered the young sons and daughters of the American prairies.
Suddenly from the side lines they popped out—a whole battery of them, with their bug-like machines on tall stilts. The motion picture camera men were taking no chances that anything important would escape their fire. Evidently they couldn't quite place us, however, so we got through the door without further incident.
When we had entered the grounds through the gate at the far side of the lawn my thoughtful friend had thrown away his lighted cigar, feeling that promiscuous smoking here would be taboo from danger of fire to so precious a national jewel as the White House. Within the anteroom to the executive offices the scene very decidedly suggested one of those jovial masculine gatherings termed a "smoker." The seething and motley company of (obviously) newspaper men put one in mind of the recent arrival at a military training camp of a nondescript batch of drafted men not yet got into uniform. General air about the room of loafing in a corner cigar store.
Then, suddenly, a rising murmur and a pell-mell push toward the door. My friend and I were swayed out upon the step, and saw at the gate directly at the street corner of the building the movie camera men very vigorously clearing for action. They had halted close before them a tall, striking and very distinguished figure. You instantly recognized him by the insignia which he wore on the slope toward his chin of his under lip—a wisp of whisker (light straw color) such as decorated the illustrious countenance, too, of the late James Abbott McNeil Whistler.
He was, this gentleman, looking very sheepish, continually bowing in a rather strained manner to the camera men and lifting his black derby hat to them. They were scrambling about the legs of their engines and cranking away with a rattle. "Over this way a little, Mr. Paderewski!" yelled one. "Hold on, Mr. Paderewski, there you are!" bawled another. Boisterous mirth about the doorway.... "That's good!" "Sure, he's only a premier."
Then, a deferential scattering to make way for him as he approached. Held him up again, the camera guerrillas, on the steps. He was bowing with an effect of increasing strain and the intensity of his sheepishness becoming painful to contemplate. His hair a white bush thrusting out behind. Ghostly white bow tie. His black clothes beautifully sleek and pressed. At close up, his features blunter, less sensitive in chiselling than appears in his photographs. The flesh of his face striking in the degree of the pinkness and fairness of complexion of the races of Northern Europe.