P. S. Well he has called again and we have went to dinner and a movie and it was a lovely sweet story called “Heart’s Athrob” and Mr. Edgerton says to me, “There now you see Miss Riggs are we not better and purer and sweeter for having saw such a lovely story about great souls and pitiful sufferings?” And of course I cannot deny that we are for I have got tears in my eyes and he says, “Just such a beautful picture as that I wish to make for the American people to look upon and I have got to make it out of that poor little Man that lives up there in the big white house and you have got to help me,” he says, “and we will be the greatest pair of showmen in the whole of creation.”
I says, “Mr. Edgerton I am going to try my best but it seems to me that all the inspiration goes out of me when I have been told that it is not the truth. I don’t understand how it can of happened and I want you to tell me more about this game of politics how it come about that a Man like what you say the Spokesman is can of got in such a high office.”
He says, “It was a series of strange accidents Miss Riggs like what you would see in a melodrama. To begin with this little Man was a sort of political Office-boy for the rich men in his state that put him into office because He would always do what they said. It is a state with a lot of Catholics in it and so if you are going to get elected to anything you have got to learn to walk like you had broken bottles under your feet and He was the best bottle-walker of them all so He come to be Governor but then He had a crisis to deal with there was a strike in the city of the policemen—”
“Policemen?” I says. “But I thought that policemen was to put down strikes!”
“So it is supposed to be but this time the policemen went on a strike themselves.”
“Well,” I says, “but that must of been the Reds!”
“So the papers said but the policemen said it was because they couldn’t live on their wages. You know that policemen is mostly Irish Catholics that don’t usually go Bolshiviki but always vote the Democratic ticket and it happened that the mayor of the city was a Democrat and he fixed it up with them to give them a raise in wages and the strike was to be called off. But the bankers and the business men don’t like no wage-raises because it sets a bad example and so they went to the Governor and they says, ‘Governor you was elected on a program of strict economy and law and order and here this Irish Catholic Democratic son-of-a-sea-cook is going to get all the votes away from you.’ So they say for the Governor to break up the settlement and He does it because the Governor is bigger than the mayor you see. He goes to the city and Him and the mayor has a meeting in a hotel-room and the mayor pastes Him one in the eye and knocks Him down.”
“But I thought you said the Governor was bigger!” I says.
“I mean bigger legally. He has got more power.”