Tell Pop I got his letter and I thank him for all the ideas on politics he has sent. Some of them seems to me very good and I shall be pleased to make use of them. Mr. Edgerton says it is the opinions of the plain people that he wants, and I am sure Pop is plain enough to suit anybody. Tell him that I don’t wonder he can’t hardly believe this good fortune that is come to me. But it is God’s truth just as I have wrote it.
And you can tell Pop he dont need to worry about his baby girl, because I am taking the best of care of myself. Mr. Edgerton aint tried to get fresh and I dont think he is that sort at all. He never says nothing about how I have such nice long brown lashes over my china-blue eyes. I dont think he even saw that darn I had put in my stocking though I forgot and put my foot up on a chair right where he could see. The truth is I think he loves his wife: only he dont know quite what to make of her just now and he’s lonesome for a little female cheerfulness. If he buys me a dinner it aint going to break him and he’s getting his money’s worth and more being educated about how the plain people feels about politics and international affairs. And besides, Mom, dont forget that I have got a feller by the name of Walter that I am someday going to marry even if he is only a poor shipping-clerk in Camden and that ought to be enough for my Pop to fret over.
P. S. Well, I have just got home from another dinner and Mr. Edgerton has told me how I come to lose out with the Spokesman. He wouldnt have nothing to do with my ideas for the debt settlement because He says it aint a way to collect the money but only to spend it and the Spokesman dont believe in spending no money that you dont have to. He says most of the plain people dont care nothing about art and they wouldnt approve of people gadding about Europe and as for drinking their wines the Spokesman jumps a yard any time anybody tries to get him to say anything about prohibition one way or the other excepting only that laws is laws and all good Americans should obey them.
Mr. Edgerton says that if I am going to be useful to him I have got to learn the rules of this game and one of them is that the Spokesman will never take sides in no dispute. It is His business to be popular and you can never get Him to say nothing that is going to get a lot of people down on Him. Ever since He has been in politics which is since he was a boy He has spent all his time dodging the tricks of people that was trying to get Him to put His foot into something and He has got to be the most cautious Side-stepper they have ever had in the game.
Well Mom we got to gossiping about how things is there in the great white house where the Spokesman lives and gee it is comical it is so much like the Elite Beauty Parlors with everybody watching everybody else and pulling and hauling and intreeging against them. The Spokesman you see is just like a King; and all of the courtiers wants to keep his favor and if He gives three minutes more of His time to one of them the other one retires into the corner and has a fit of the weeps or else he goes off and tries to find something bad about the first one, that he can have his great aunt whisper to the Spokesman’s second cousin.
Mr. Edgerton says that this great man got into office by a fluke because he wasnt never meant to get in but only to be Vice-Spokesman to keep him on the shelf. The Vice-Spokesman it seems dont have nothing to say or if he does nobody listens to him. But now He’s got in, and He’s brought a little bunch of people along that used to be his angels back in the State of North Carolina or wherever it is up in the icy North where he comes from. These are rich men that used to pay the fare of this Spokesman when he was a little Feller, and was a sort of Office-boy for them in politics, to run the state like they wanted it.
But now He is got to be the greatest Man in the whole world and gee they cant quite bring themselves to believe it and they dont know quite how to take it. They cant get used to the idea of taking orders from what used to be their Office-boy and the Spokesman He cant get used to giving no orders because of course He always feels respectful to these gentlemen because they have got so much money and always have paid His way. And at the same time they are scared to death for fear He might get the big head and take the notion to be the Boss. And each of them hates all the others like poison because each of them is trying to shove the others away from the Spokesman’s elbow.
So that is how it goes, and Mr. Edgerton says I am not to get discouraged if I dont always have my way about what the Spokesman says. I can be sure that I will win out in the end because I represent the plain people and they have got the votes and everybody knows they are the real boss. And Mr. Edgerton says that just now what the Spokesman is worried about is what to do about the Reds that seem to be making an awful lot of fuss and what would I think he had ought to tell the world about it?
And gee Mom you can imagine how fine that was because it was one of the things that Pop has wrote to me about. So I says, “Them fellers had everyone ought to be sent to jail.”