And of course I had to be modest so I says, “I really didn’t think it was so remarkable as that, it is what anyone would say.”
And Mr. Edgerton says, “That’s it exactly. What I have to do is to find out what anyone would say and say it for them.”
“But why,” I says—“when they can just as good say it for themselves?” So he explained that people likes to have things said for them it is less trouble and it pleases them to hear their own ideas, “it is like looking at themselves in a mirror, if you understand what I mean,” says he and I says that most any woman would understand that.
And Mr. Edgerton says that the Spokesman likes to say things like the sort that I say, because it saves Him having to talk about other things that ain’t so easy for Him to think about. The reporters asks Him questions and He don’t know what to answer and then there is always people trying to get Him to do this and that and to say yes or no and He don’t like to say either nor to do neither. The Spokesman’s other name is Cautious, and He never does nothing He don’t have to and He seldom does. He says that most problems solve themselves if you let them alone.
Says I, “What that generally means is that somebody else solves them.” And Mr. Edgerton laughs and says, “Well, yes, but then if they solve them wrong it ain’t your funeral.”
And he showed me how it goes. There will be two big fellows fighting over some juicy bit of graft and they come to Washington and pull all the strings they know of each of them trying to get the Spokesman to give it to his gang. And the Spokesman listens polite to both of them and tells both of them He’ll do the best he can and then He don’t do nothing and both of them hates Him like poison and calls Him all the names they can think of. But bye and bye they get tired of quarreling and patch up some sort of agreement to divide the graft and then they go off and think it over and say to themselves by golly that Guy is a slick one, He knows how to take care of Himself and that’s the Sort we need to run the country.
Well just about that time a couple comes into the Chink restaurant a pair of swell lookers and I see they knows Mr. Edgerton. The gentleman gives him a bow and the lady too but then she gets a glimpse of me and she freezes up like she was hit by an artic cyclone and she goes by with her nose high up like an aeroplane. And I see that Mr. Edgerton is a bit flustered and don’t know what to talk about next and I says, “It seems your lady friend don’t like the way I look perhaps she thinks my hair is too decorative or some thing.” And he smiles, kind of sickish like and I says, “Let me tell you how it is if you want to have anything pretty in the gas-house district of Camden New Jersey, you have got to carry it along with you.” And he says, “Yes, I suppose so.”
I see he is badly rattled so I says, “I want you to know that I know exactly how it is and you don’t have to try to fool me or yourself. Everything is pure and sweet between us like we was the two babes in the woods but I know too you ain’t going to get Washington smart society to believe it. And I can guess how it’ll be if anybody tips off Mrs. Edgerton to the fact that her husband is doing research work among the plain people. By the way how’s the poor soul getting along?”
“Well,” he says, “just now the angina pectoris has moved on to one of her toes.”
“Well,” says I, “at least it’s getting as far away from her mind as it can and maybe it’ll move out altogether. But what I started to say is this if you think you better not see me any more—”