I says, “About that I cannot tell,” I says. “Would it be right for me to keep the job if I am not doing no work for you and the Spokesman?”
“Oh Mame,” he says, “you are too fine a patriot to be living in these degenerate times. Of course you can keep the job for you have earned a hundred times the salary and if that poor little Shrimp in the big white house had the sense to of took your advice you would of saved Him for another term. But now I don’t know what will happen to Him.”
I says, “Is He going to have somebody to write His speeches for Him?”
“My God of course,” he says, “that poor Fish He could not write a speech for an Epsom Salts convention.”
“And then who is to do it?” I says and he tells me that Mr. Grandaddy Prows is got back from Europe and him and Senator Buttles is had a row as to which is to name the new Secretary and so they have left it to Mr. Edgerton as usual and he has picked out a newspaper friend of his and he says, “Mame you will have to stand by him and help him because when I look back on my past then I am sorry for this one’s future.”
And I says, “Let me meet him at once Mr. Edgerton,” and he says, “So that is all you care about me!” and I says, “I am thinking about my duty to the plain people of this great country,” and he says, “Mamie Riggs when they have the first Woman Spokesman of this great country you have got to be Her.”
So then we make a date to meet the new Secretary for lunch tomorrow and I come home and there Mom I get your letter telling me that you have saw Walter and he has agreed to believe that I am good and pure and that he still loves me and oh Mom I am so glad I did not yield to that fearful temptation out there on the park bench in the moonlight!
P. S. Well Mom I have just got back from having lunch with the new Secretary and gee it is so wonderful I am more happy than I know how to write. For he is a good man and very serious and I do not think he will ever be cynical like I fear Mr. Edgerton is got to be. And he is very polite and respectful and says how he has heard what fine ideas I have give to Mr. Edgerton and he wants me to help him because he knows what a hard time he is going to have especially at the beginning.
And I says, “Yes Mr. Porkin,” for that is his name, “you will find it hard because there is many questions that people is trying to trap the Spokesman into talking about and He is not being able to keep so quiet as He used to, and it will mean His ruin because there is just nothing He can say and why does He not say it? For example,” I says, “there is this business about the Bolshiviki count when he comes here there will be no end of a row to know why he can’t talk what he wants to and then maybe when his wife gets well she will want to know if she can talk and you know how much harder it is to shut up a woman,” I says. “And then there is this business about the big banker that is in the cabinet Mr. Lemon or Melon or whatever fruit he is and why he does not stop the bootlegging business while he is making the whiskey and why he is got all the income taxes refunded for his companies and why he is allowed to charge as high as he wants for all the aluminum that us women is got to have in our kitchens. You can just see there is nothing the Spokesman can say about all that and you have got to see that He says it. And there is this business about our lending money to all these here Dago countries where the young secretaries of the state department is got noble wives,” I says, “and about the Spokesman having hid the reports of the commission or what ever it is called that wanted to have the price of sugar cut down and ruin all them sugar kings that is keeping up our prosperity. I tell you Mr. Porkin,” I says, “I have been studying hard and if there was time I could tell you a hundred different things that if anybody can ever get the Spokesman talking about then He is done for the rest of His life,” I says, “and your job is just one and that is to hammer into His Head day and night that when you have got nothing you can say then you must say it and nothing else.”