# The Man Who Knew Coolidge/Part 1

—And I certainly do enjoy listening to you gentlemen and getting your views. That's one of the nice things about being on a Pullman like this: you can guarantee that you'll meet a lot of regular he-Americans with sound opinions and ideas.
And now let me tell you: the way I look at these things—
I don't mean to suggest for one second that I've got any better bean than the plain ordinary average citizen, but I've given a whole lot of attention to politics and such matters and—In fact, strikes me that it's the duty of all the better-educated citizens to take an interest in the affairs of the State, for ​what, after all, as a fellow was saying to us at the Kiwanis Club the other day—what is the Government but the union of all of us put together for mutual advantage and protection?
And me—why say, I read the political editorials in the Advocate—that's the leading paper in my town—Zenith—I read 'em like most folks read the sporting page. And as a result of all this and certain personal information that I can't disclose the sources of, I've come to the firm conclusion—
Here's something maybe you gentlemen never thought of:
They can all say all they want to about how President Coolidge—good old silent Cal Coolidge!—isn't maybe as flashy as some of these statesmen. Maybe he isn't as much given to shooting off his mouth as certain other public figures that I could name. Maybe he isn't what my daughter would call so "Ritzy"—
And say, by golly it's beyond me where the young generation of today, taking them by and ​large, get all this slang that they pull. Why, here just the other day my daughter was talking to her brother, and Robby— That's the boy's name; only fifteen; three years younger than his sister, but smart's a whip. There's certainly one up-and-coming kid, if I do say so.
Why say—
Now I never put him up to it, y'understand. The Lord knows I can afford to give him the best the land affords, at least to a reasonable extent, I mean as much comfort and even luxury as is good for him. I'd never made a peep about how maybe it'd be a good stunt for him to go out and maybe earn a little money on the side. But he comes in one evening just before supper—before dinner-time, with his hat on one side of his head, looking proud as Punch.
So I says to him, "Well, Robert Livingston—"
As a matter of fact, his middle name isn't Livingston at all, it's Otto, but we often call him Robert Livingston, jokingly.
"Well, Robert Livingston," I says to him, "who ​do you think you are? Thomas Edison or Napoleon or somebody? Or maybe Red Grange! Sit down, Mr. Grange, and let me hang up your hat."
You know, jokingly.
Well, he just looks at me—
I'm afraid if the truth were known the kid is pretty gosh-awful fresh, but he's so darn' cute about it that you can't get sore at him, the darn' little cuss—just as up-and-coming as I was at his age. He just stands and looks at me and sticks his hands in his pants-pockets and then—
Say, what do you think he went and done? He put a record on the Rectophone.
You know—that's this new kind of phonograph that reproduces every tone of the human voice or music. It's some kind of new scientific invention that for a long time the scientists couldn't ever achieve it. But they got it now so they don't miss any of these undertones—or overtones or whatever it is—that they used to miss by earlier methods of reproduction. It costs a lot more than the ​old-fashioned phonograph, but way I look at it, the best is the cheapest in the long run.
Well, Robby, the little rascal, he goes to work and puts on a record, something about "I may have been a private in the A.E.F., but believe me I'm a general with the dames." Then he says, "Dad," he says, "in me you behold the feline's robe de nuit. I've gone and—"
Mind you, 's I said, I'd never even suggested to him that he get a job out of school-hours and earn a little money. I most certainly do believe that it's a mighty fine thing for a boy to do a little work, no matter how well fixed his folks are, and learn the value of money; learn how doggone hard it is to sneak up on ole Mr. Dollar and get a strangle hold on him.
I swear, a lot of the young folks today seem to think the Old Man is simply made of money and don't have to sweat for every cent he makes. But same time, I hadn't figured it was time yet to explain this to Robby, though maybe that was a mistake on my part, and if it was, I'm perfectly will​ing to admit it—confession is good for the soul, as they say.
Maybe I should have drummed it into him long ago. I've got it on mighty straight inside information—in fact one of my best friends is acquainted with a man who knows the Rockefellers intimately—and he tells me that the Rockefellers, people with all their jack, they bring their families up to be just as careful of money as any of us: they don't let their kids run away with the notion that it don't take any trouble to collect the dough.
Well, this gentleman related a significant little incident regarding the Rockefellers that he heard personally. Seems he was right there at the time. Here was old John D., probably with half the money-kings in the world waiting to see him, talking to young John D., just as simple and quiet as any one of us. And he said, and I've never forgotten his words—in fact I repeated them to Robby that day—the old gentleman looked at young John D., and prob'ly I imagine he put his ​hand on his shoulder, and he looked at him and said, "My boy, waste not, want not!"
Yes sir!
But anyway—
I'm afraid I'm getting a little off the subject of Coolidge, and if there's anything I hate it's a fellow that if he starts to talk about a subject he can't stick to it.
I remember one time we had one of these book-authors speaking at the Kiwanis Club, and say, that fellow, maybe he could write all right (though at that I'd like to see him sit down and dictate a letter to some fellow that would make him pay his account and yet not make him get sore!)—and as I say, I don't know anything about his writing, but when it came to talking, why say, he wandered all round Robin Hood's barn! Shows what a lack of business-training does to these fellows that think they're so gosh-awful smart and superior!
Well, as I say, Robby puts this record on the Rectophone—and that's an instrument you gentle​men certainly want to try—and he looks at me, and he says, "Well, Dad, I've got me a job in Zabriskie's Drug Store for Saturday afternoons, and I draw down one and one-half bucks for each and every said same!"
Pretty good, eh? I'll say it is! And him only fifteen.
But what I started to say was: The way that kid and his sister torture the English language to death just about gets my goat. Here him and his sister was talking one time, and he starts kidding her about some bird she was sweet on, and he says, "That guy's all wet."
But she come back at him, quick's a flash, "Yeh, he's wet like a Methodist Sunday School!"
Yes sir, it beats the cars how this new generation takes the Queen's English like you and I was brought up to speak it in the good old-fashioned schools where there was some thoroughness and discipline and not just a lot of these flashy fads, and they just practically ruin it, and as I was saying, if Sister—that's what we often call ​my daughter—if she was talking about Coolidge, she'd probably say he wasn't "Ritzy."
Well, if you want to look at it that way, all right. Maybe he isn't as highfalutin as some people I could name. But I wonder if any of you gentlemen ever thought of this?
He may not shoot off a lot of fireworks, but do you know what he is? He's safe.
Yes sir, Cal is the President for real honest-to-God Americans like us.
There's a lot of folks that pan him, but what are they? You can bet your sweet life he isn't popular with the bums or yeggs or anarchists or highbrows or cynics—
I remember our pastor saying one time, "A cynic is a man who sneers, and a man who sneers is setting himself up to tell God that he doesn't approve of God's handiwork!" No sir! You can bet Coolidge ain't popular with the Bolsheviks or the lazy boob of a workman that wants fifteen ​bucks a day for doing nothing! No sir, nor with the cocaine fiends or the drunkards or the fellows that don't want the prohibition law enforced—
Not that I never take a drink. What I say about prohibition is:
Once a law has been passed by the duly elected and qualified representatives of the people of these United States, in fact once it's on the statue books, it's there, and it's there to be enforced. There hadn't ought to be any blind pigs or illegal stills. But same time, that don't mean you got to be a fanatic.
If a fellow feels like making some good home-brewed beer or wine, or if you go to a fellow's house and he brings out some hootch or gin that you don't know where he got it and it isn't any of your business, or if you have a business acquaintance coming to your house and you figure he won't loosen up and talk turkey without a little spot and you know a good dependable bootlegger that you can defend on, why, then that's a different matter, and there ain't any reason on God's ​green earth that I can see why you shouldn't take advantage of it, always providing you aren't setting somebody a bad example or making it look like you sympathized with law-breaking.
No, sir!
But now to come down to the point of my story, I hope to be able to give you gentlemen an agreeable little surprise.
I know Coolidge personally!
Yes sir, in fact I was a classmate of his! Sure as I'm telling you! I'll give you gentlemen an inside view of him, not only as I saw him in college but as I've studied him at the White House!
When I say I was a classmate of his—
Well, the fact is that certain unfortunate family circumstances, that I needn't go into and that wouldn't interest you, prevented me from completing my college course—
My father, and a fine, upstanding, cultured gentleman of the old school he was, too, always ready with a helping hand for any mortal that needed it, a man of A 1 standing in his community​—Fall River, Mass., that was; in fact I was born and brought up in Fall River, which is, as you may know, one of the most beautiful and enterprising and go-ahead communities in the fair state of Massachusetts—he was, in fact, the leading corn and feed merchant in all his section of Fall River.
But I'm afraid he put a little too much confidence in the advice of an alleged friend.
Fact is, he invested his savings in a perpetual motion machine company that had little or no value. He died, and it was quite sudden, in December of my Freshman year, so I had to go back home and take up the burden of helping support the family.
But I certainly got a lot of value out of even that comparatively short time at Amherst, and the fellows at the Kiwanis Club tell me that they can see certain educational advantages in the quality of such speeches or motions as I may be called upon to deliver at the club, and welcomes to the speakers.
​So it was at college that I was able to get an inside view of Cal Coolidge that has maybe been denied to even his more intimate associates in these later busy years when he has been so engrossed in the cares of the nation.
I don't suppose I could have been called one of Cal's closest friends in college, but I knew him pretty well. In fact we lived not far from each other, and I used to see him frequently. I'll admit that I never had any notion that he'd climb to his present high position and international and historical fame, but even in those days you could see from the way he worked, and the way he looked at a thing from all sides before he went off half-cocked, that in whatever department of life he might choose, he would make his mark. And the next time you hear one of these birds criticizing Coolidge, you just tell 'em that, will you, from one who knew him in the days when he wasn't surrounded with adulations!
I can remember just's well as if it was yesterday, Cal and me happened to come out of a class ​together, and I said, "Well, it's going to be a cold winter," and he came right back, "Yep."
Didn't waste a lot of time arguing and discussing! He knew!
And another time: I never could get along any too good in Latin. My talent, you might say, is more along practical lines. I asked Cal—we happened to be going into class together, and I asked him, "Say, what's the Latin for 'defy'?"
"Don't know," he said. No beating around the bush and pretending and four-flushing, but coming right out with it, bang! That's the kind of man he is, you take it from one who knows him!
Yes sir, I knew the boy and had the greatest affection and respect for him, like all of us who had the rare opportunity of understanding him!
And to think that I might not have gotten acquainted with him if we hadn't been chums together in one of the smaller colleges!
I tell you gentlemen, the way I figure it: the great, you might say the invincible advantage of the smaller educational institutions is that they ​throw the boys together in such intimate contact and—as Dr. Frank Crane says in one of his pieces somewhere—they provide that close knowledge of human beings which fits a boy for supremacy in the future walks and struggles of life. That's been my experience.
Still, same time—
These great modern universities, with their laboratories and stadiums and everything— They do have an advantage; and fact is, my son is preparing to enter the state university.
But anyway:
Naturally, considering that I had the privilege—through no virtue of my own, mind you—of being in my modest way rather chummy with Coolidge, I've watched his rise to world-wide fame with peculiar interest, and after he became President I often said to my wife, "By golly, I'd like ​to see the boy and just shake hands with him again."
Not, mind you, because he was President. After all, I've reached a position where I'm just as independent as the other fellow. An American citizen doesn't have to bow down and kowtow to anybody, whether it be the President or a millionaire or Queen Marie of Bulgaria or anybody—
By the way, Queen Marie made quite a stay at Zenith. She stopped over pretty near an hour between trains, and say, we certainly gave her a good time. The mayor read her an address and presented her with a gold-mounted polished cow's-foot combination ink-well, thermometer, and daily text calendar that I'll bet she's showing the folks in her palace right now. But I mean:
It wasn't because he was President, as I explained to the wife, but—
"Besides," I said to her, "just between you and me, I bet it would give the boy a real kick, after having to associate with ambassadors and generals ​and Frank Kellogg and all those high-up guys, to be able to let down for a minute and shake the mitt of a fellow that he used to laugh and joke with in the old care-free days before we both assumed the responsibilities of our present careers."
So here about six months ago, when we were planning to take a little trip to New York—
I had to go to New York to look over a new mimeographing machine. You see, I'm in the office-supply business, and let me tell you gentlemen that though I'm the first to respect other professions, though I honor the surgeon who can snatch you from the very gates of death, the lawyer who can so brilliantly argue your case—though personally I always think it's better to settle out of court—or the great banker or department-store owner, yet in all fairness let me put this to you:
Who is it that enables these gentlemen to do business and get their great ideas across in an up-​to-date, efficient, time-saving manner? Who is it but the office-supply man! Yes sir, I'm proud of my profession, and as a matter of fact I have the honor of representing the office-supply category in our great Zenith Kiwanis Club!
Just take filing-cabinets alone!
I always say, and sometimes the boys laugh at me at the Athletic Club, but good-naturedly, because I've got as fine a lot of friends as anybody I know, and believe me I'm mighty good and proud of them, and I tell 'em, "Boys," I say, "excuse me if I get flowery, but you must always remember I'm a great reader of Colonel Bob Ingersoll—though I'm the first to deprecate the unfortunate religious ideas and skepticism that marred that otherwise great philosopher and public speaker, and probably it's from him that I got the idea of talking without having to resort to cheap and vulgar phrases, besides being a college man and—
"Excuse me if I get highfalutin," I often say to them—you know, at lunch at the Athletic Club—you know how a lot of fellows will get to remi​niscing and chewing the rag when maybe they ought to be beating it back to their offices and getting on the job, but—
"Maybe you think I'm getting kind of woozy about it," I tell 'em, "but to me the beauties of modern filing-systems, which enable a man to instantly and without the least loss of time or effort find a letter on which, perhaps, depends the closing of an important deal, is in its practical way, to say nothing of the physical appearance of modern up-to-date filing-cabinets, no longer mere wooden boxes but whether in steel or fireproofed wood, the finest example of the cabinet-maker's art and imitating perfectly the rarest woods— To me," I often tell them, "these filing-systems are in every way as beautiful as the poet's song, as the flush on the maiden's cheek when she first hears the first whispered words of love, or the soft chirp of the mother bird at eveningtide, chirping to her birdlings. Yes sir, you bet your sweet life they are, and you can laugh all you want to!"
​So as I say, I had to go on to New York to look over—
I usually do my buying in Chicago, but this was a new caper that the wholesalers in Chicago hadn't got hold of yet. I'd been working pretty hard, and my wife was kind of a little run down from the after-effects of the flu—
And say, God, what a curse that is! I wonder if you gentlemen ever stopped to think that though the flu is in each individual case so much less fatal than diseases like the plague or brain-fever, yet considering the number of those afflicted with it—and after all, when you look at a subject, you've got to go into the statistics of it—of course naturally an office-supply man has great advantages that way, being in the business— When you think how many folks get flu, it seems like one of the most important of all diseases.
I tell you, I'm as religious as the next fellow, and I never'd for one moment dream of criticizing the preachers' doctrines—let them figure out theology and religion, I say, and I'll stick to the ​office-supply business. But don't it sometimes almost make you question the workings of Providence when you see the mysterious way in which disease smites down the just with the unjust?
Why, my wife went on sniveling and subject to constant headaches for more than six weeks after the doctor said he'd got her all cured of the flu!
So I said to her, "Honey," as I often call her, "what say you and me and Delmerine—"
Delmerine, that's my daughter's name. Don't know, by the way, that I've introduced myself. Lowell Schmaltz is my name—
Funny! Whole lot of people take Schmaltz for a German name, but of course as a matter of fact, when you look into the matter, it isn't German at all but Pennsylvania Dutch, which is almost the same as saying New England Yankee and—
Well, I figured Delmerine could get away all right, because she's finished high school.
I'd asked her if she wanted to go to college—I could perfectly well afford to send her, of course—but she thought it over and she felt more ​kind of called to the musical line, and she was taking vocal and piano. But I figured she could drop them all right for a few weeks and I said—
Robby (that's my son), of course he couldn't get away, because he was in school, but—
I says to my wife, "Mamie, how'd it strike you—I've simply got to go to New York on a business trip and things are kind of slack now, and how'd it be if Delmerine and you went along and saw the sights and everything?"
Say, she was tickled pink! She'd never seen New York, and of course—
Not that I'd want to live in the Big Burg. What I always say is: New York is a swell hang-out for a few days' visit, and theaters and all like that, but when it comes to living there—say, I wouldn't live there if they gave me Times Square and threw in Riverside Drive to boot. Compared with Zenith—
And believe me, gentlemen—
I don't believe in going around boosting your own burg all the time. I don't suppose Zenith is ​any better, practically, than Minneapolis or Cincinnati or Pittsburgh, say. But it certainly is one high-class city, and you may or may not know that not only do we lead the world in the manufacture of loud speakers and overalls, but we have, since Lindbergh's trans-oceanic flight, made all the plans and raised quite a lot of the money to construct the largest and finest flying-field between Chicago and New York, excepting Detroit and Dayton of course, and we plan to have a restaurant at the areodrome there serving short-orders twenty-four hours a day.
And I must say Mamie and I are pretty well fixed there. Believe me, we don't have to travel to get any ideas how to live! Just a couple of years ago I finished building a dandy little Italian villa-style bungalow, with a Spanish mission entrance. We've got two bathrooms, and a fireplace, and everything fixed up first-rate, and in the basement I've installed an electric washing-machine and a garbage-incinerator, and we got something that you don't find in many houses: in both bathrooms ​I've got a slit in the wall, right by the stationary bowls, for the disposal of safety razor blades.
And say! I've got a great plan. Some day I'm—I am, by golly, no kid!—sounds crazy, but it'd be the greatest luxury you gentlemen ever heard of; just think, when you were taking a nice, long, lazy hot bath; some day I'm going to put a radio in my bathroom! But that's an ideal to be worked out in the future. Maybe it'll be my contribution to American progress. But still, let that pass, for the moment. As I say, we don't live so bad.
And of course I drive a Chrysler myself and I gave my wife a Chevrolet coop—
Say, I certainly got a rise out of her. She's one darn' nice little woman, if I do say so; been an A 1 wife in every way, even if she does kick a little sometimes about my driving too fast. Well, here her last birthday I come home and I could see she was mouching around skittish as a wasp, because 'most always on her birthdays I've got something tucked inside my pocket for her.
"Do you know what day this is?" I finally says ​to her, after I'd looked over the paper and listened in on the radio a little—though I remember there wasn't anything on then except the daily stock-receipt reports from the Omaha packing yards.
She brightens up and tries to look kittenish and makes out like she doesn't know, and she says, "No, what?"
"It's the day—or it will be the evening—of the Kid Milligan—Pooch Federstein fight, and we better invite in some of the folks and listen to the fight on the radio," I says.
Well sir, the poor kid, she certainly did look awful' down in the mouth. I didn't know whether she was going to be plucky, or whether she'd bawl me out—I got to admit she does, sometimes. But she was game and didn't say anything, and pretty soon, 'long about fifteen, maybe twenty minutes, I suggested we go out and have a little walk before dinner. Well, meantime, you get me, I'd had the fellow bring this Chevrolet coop around and park it right in front of the house.
​"Here's a nice little car?" I says when I sees the Chev. "Wonder how she runs.";
And I goes and gets in and starts it!
Well sir— You know how women carry on. She cusses me out, and she beefs, and she gets on a rampage, and she says, "Why Lowell Schmaltz," she says, "what do you mean! What'll the owner say?"
"I'll bet he'll do a lot of saying," I laughs, "if he—or she—happens to see me in it!"
"Why, I never knew you to do a thing like that!" she says. "You get right out of that car!"
Say, I had her wild!
"So that's how a fellow gets treated, is it," I says, and I pretend to look hurt, and I gets out, and then I draws her attention to a little card that I'd had tied on the door handle—'d tied it on myself, matter of fact—that said, "To Mamie on her birthday from Woofums"—Woofums—kind of a nut name, but that's what she calls me sometimes when we're kind of fooling around.
Say, maybe she didn't pretty nearly keel over!
​Yes sir, you bet, both of us have our own cars, though mine—
It ain't the fault of the Chrysler itself, I'm certain of that, certainly a high-grade A 1 machine, but the garage got to fooling with it, and my car's got a squeak in it somewhere that I by golly simply can not locate, and say, if there's anything gets me wild when I'm driving—
I can stand the big gaff— Why say, when I had a tire blow out on me after only two thousand miles (any of you gentlemen ever try the Melps tire? Well, don't, that's my advice to you, and believe me I know, I've tried two of them, and in my opinion this monkey-business they advertise about wrapping the fabric crosswise or whatever it is is all the bugs; don't get the result they claim at all)—
I can stand those big things, but say, even the littlest squeak, why say, it simply drives me crazy when I'm driving.
Why, here just last Sunday I was driving the family out to a cousin of ours that lives in Elm​wood for Sunday dinner, and it was as fine a day as you ever saw, but just about the time I began to enjoy myself, and I was going past the Seven Corners and looking at the new filling-station they got there—say, man, I'll bet that's one of the finest filling-stations in the United States: twelve pumps they got, and a comfort station fixed up to look like an old-fashioned log cabin, and a supply store with a great big huge enormous fish-aquarium simply chuck full of goldfish right in the window. And geraniums.
And just when I was calling it to Mame's attention—by golly all of a sudden that squeak started again.
Well say, I couldn't enjoy anything all day. After dinner, I took Cousin Ed out for a drive, to see if he could locate the squeak, and we drove right down through a woods, a park they got there, mighty pretty and I'd 've enjoyed it like the dickens—I always was a great believer in Nature—but every time I looked at a tree or a ​nice rustic-style bench or something like that, that darn' squeak would start in again, and Cousin Ed—he thinks he's such a wiz at cars, but Lord love you, he couldn't locate that squeak any more'n I could.
But's I say: I guess we're about as well fixed as most folks and we certainly don't have to get away from home to enjoy ourselves, but when I said to my wife, "I kind of got an idea you and Delmerine might come along with me and give New York the once-over," she looked like somebody'd left her a million dollars.
And Delmerine she just hollers, "Oh boy! I'll give those Manhattan cabarets a look at a live one for once!"
"And we might stop at Cousin Walter's in Troy, on the way," I says.
"Oh no, let's not," says my wife.
"But we got to go there! Ain't Cousin Walter living there?" I says.
​"Well, what of that?" she says. "Haven't you and he always hated each other?"
"Well, maybe we have," I says, "but he's a relative, ain't he? And when you travel you got to look up your relatives, ain't you?"
Well, make a long story short, we decided to stop at Cousin Walter's for a few days—and then—man!—then I springs the big surprise!
"And after New York," I says, "we'll come home by way of Washington, and we'll stop in and call on the President!"
"Oh Papa, we couldn't do that!" Delmerine hollers.
"I'd like to know why not!" I says. "Ain't he and I classmates?"
"Yes, but maybe he wouldn't remember you," she says.
"Now you look here!" I says. "If you think for one moment that I wasn't just as important in college as he was, and maybe then some—they told me if I could have stayed till spring I'd 've been on the baseball team— But that isn't the point! ​Let me tell you right now that words like that are an insult not to me, my fine young lady, but to the Great Executive himself!
"What is it that more than any other one quality distinguishes leaders of men like Cal? It isn't merely his profound thought, his immovable courage, his genial and democratic manners, but it's the fact that he's so close a student of human nature that he quickly but thoroughly studies each man as he meets him, and so never can forget him! Understand now," I says to them, "I understand that the President is one of the busiest men in the country, what with having to sign documents, and shake hands with delegations of Elks, and so on, and I certainly don't intend to intrude, but we'll just drop in and give him a pleasant surprise—think how many years it is since we've seen each other!—and just shake hands and pass on. And you'll be able, Delmerine, to tell your grandchildren that once you heard the voice of Calvin Coolidge!"
Well, of course when I made it clear they were ​tickled to death at the prospect, and so we started making plans—personally I was for just taking some suit-cases along, but my wife held out for the black trunk, and I must say—I'm always the first one to admit it when I'm licked, and Mamie certainly won that time!—she pointed out I'd have to have my dress-suit in New York and it wouldn't get wrinkled in a wardrobe trunk—and now say, while we're speaking of that, I'll bet it's struck you gentlemen as it has me: there's one of the highest-class and most significant of modern inventions that do so much to make life happy, the wardrobe trunk, and what a lot it adds to ease of travel and seeing the world, yes sir, she sure won that time and—
And just then—
Say, isn't it funny how a fellow will remember comparatively unimportant details even at a critical time! Happened just then that Robby—that's my son, he's only fifteen, and the little cuss had started smoking, seems like I'd done everything I could to make him stop, but he's such a cute little beggar ​the way he comes back at you when you try to bawl him out that I never could get a word in edgeways. Well, he comes in—
And besides, I must say I still ain't sold on the idea of cigarettes.
I think I can with justification call myself what you might call a modern, up-to-date liberal man. I was the first fellow in my neighborhood to put in a radio, and I never did believe they ought to have hung Sacco and Vanzetti if they were innocent. But when it comes to smoking, I still prefer a pipe or a good cigar.
But's I was saying, he comes in smoking a cigarette, and Delmerine—that's my daughter, a girl that I want to tell you gentlemen can in my judgment sing just as good right this minute as Schumann-Heink or Sophie Tucker or any of these famous prima donnas—and she hollers at him, "Say, Dad's going to take us to see President Coolidge."
And he says, "Gee whiz! Are you going to give him enough warning so he can get away?"
​Well say, maybe I didn't light into him then! I believe in giving kids their freedom, but I've told Robby time and time again that it's nice language and nice manners that enable a fellow to get along in this world, and if he'd study his mother and me a little more instead of a lot of these smart-aleck cigarette-sucking high-school fraternity yahoos, he'd be a lot better off! You bet! Every time!
Well, so we decided to go and got started. I don't want to bore you gentlemen with a lot of details of our trip. Of course what you want to hear about is the inside glimpse of Coolidge and the White House that I was privileged to have. So I'll cut it short and come right down to the real meat of the story.
So we got off on the noon train in about a week and— Say, it certainly is remarkable, ain't it, the conveniences of railroad travel today—in America, ​I mean, not abroad. A fellow that knows every inch of Europe was telling me there ain't a what you might call really comfortable train in the whole length and breadth of the Old Country. But here—
There I sits in the club car, with every convenience and luxury—soft drinks (personally I always find the Loganberry Highball the best drink on a Pullman)—and soft drinks to be had just by touching a button, and a regular library of free magazines and everything, especially the Saturday Evening Post, which is, taking it by and large, my favorite magazine, especially the advertisements, now that they've taken to printing 'em in colors.
Say! they can keep their old masters; give me some of these advertisements!
Yes sir, it's wonderful what strides advertising has made these last few years. Of course I admire the really great and leading American authors—Mrs. Rinehart and Peter B. Kyne and Arthur ​Brisbane—but I doubt if even they can touch the fellows that get up these advertisements nowadays. And it was a mighty bright idea—I don't know who started it, but this idea of working in a girl with pretty legs in all sorts of ads; not only stocking ads, but auto ads, showing her climbing into a car; and machinery, showing her giving it the North and South, and so on. Yes sir, a fellow that wants to understand the United States, all he has to do is study the Saturday Evening Post ads, and he'll see why we're the most advanced nation in the world, and the most individual.
There's a lot of sorehead critics of America that claim we're standardized, but—
Well, to take an example, let me take—well, just for an example let me take the fellow that I happened to be lunching with before I caught this train—just take the differences between him and me. We both belong to the Athletic Club, we both belong to service clubs, we have our places of busi​ness in the same block, we live within a quarter of a mile of each other, we both like golf and a good lively jazz on the radio. And yet this fellow and me—his name is Babbitt, G. F. Babbitt, fellow in the real estate game—we're as different as Moses and Gene Tunney.
Where these poor devils of Europeans are crushed down and prevented from having their characters developed by the wide and free initiative so characteristic of American life, George and me can be friendly, yet as different—
Well, like this, for instance: I drive a Chrysler, and Babbitt doesn't. I'm a Congregationalist, and Babbitt has no use whatsomever for anything but his old Presbyterian church. He wears these big round spectacles, and you couldn't hire me to wear anything but eyeglasses—much more dignified, I think. He's got so he likes golf for its own sake, and I'd rather go fishing, any day. And—and so on. Yes sir, it's a wonderful thing how ​American civilization, as represented, you might say, by modern advertising, has encouraged the, as a speaker at the Kiwanis recently called it, free play of individualism.
But as I say—
Make a long story short, we got to Cousin Walter's at Troy all right, and on to New York—
But say, Walt certainly did entertain us in fine style—I got to thinking he wasn't such a bad cuss after all. And he's got a new house that, and I'm the first to admit it, is just as modern as mine is! A modern homey home! Vacuum cleaner and gas clothes-dryer and one of these new noiseless electric refrigerators—
Man, what a convenience that is! I never could understand why they make so much fuss over Babe Ruth or even a real scientific pioneer like Lindbergh, when we haven't yet done anything to boost the honest-to-God master genius that invented the electric refrigerator.
Think of what it'll do! Give you every sort of frozen dessert! Get rid of the iceman that tracks ​mud on the back porch! Provide ice-water so you can have a refreshing drink night or day! What I always say is: these fellows can have their big libraries, their blinking art galleries, their private pipe organs, their rose gardens, but when it comes down to the practical things that make home an inspiration and solid comfort to a real family, give me an electric refrigerator!
And I got to admit that Walt's radio shades mine just the least little bit. And there's mighty few things that indicate a fellow's social rank and progress better than his radio.
And what an invention that is! What an invention! Talk about miracles—
Just think of it! Here you sit at home in the ole over-stuffed chair, happy as a clam at low tide (or is it high tide?—whichever it is). You sit there and smoke your pipe and twiddle the knob and what do you get? Think of it! Right there at home you hear the best jazz music in the country, bands in the best hotels in Chicago, and that wonderful orchestra at Zion City! All the hockey ​matches right while they're going on! Jokes by the best comedians in the country—
Say, I heard a crackajack over the radio the other day. Seems there was a couple of fellows sitting chinning in a Pullman, just like we are. "Haven't I met you in Buffalo?" one fellow says to the other, and the other says, "I've never been in Buffalo," and the first fellow says, "Neither have I—must 've been a couple o' other fellows!"
Yes sir! and then think of the instructive lectures you get on the radio—why say, just the other night I heard that in the eye of the ordinary house-fly there are several thousand, I think it was, separate lenses. Ever know that?
And then the sermons on Sunday morning. Why, that alone would make the radio one of the most world-revolutionizing inventions the world has ever known.
I tell you, it gives a real spiritual uplift to a poor devil that all week, excepting maybe at the Kiwanis lunch, he's had to toil and moil amid the ​dust of busy affairs and forget higher things. You bet! I'll never forget one sermon that I wouldn't ever 've heard, if I hadn't had the radio, it being 'way off in Youngstown, Ohio—Reverend Wayo on how he didn't want to say that every atheist was a bootlegger, but you could bet your sweet life every bootlegger was an atheist!
Cute idea for a sermon, eh? and—
Yes sir, there's never been anything that makes for sound internationalism, nothing that combats the destructive and malign propaganda of the Bolsheviks and pacifists and all like that like the radio, and personally I class it right in with card-catalogues as an inspiration to the New Era.
So as I say, Walt's radio was every bit as good as mine, and we had some dandy drives around Troy and a big beer party Sunday evening—the only evening we stayed up late—I was mighty glad to find that Walt still kept regular hours and turned in about ten.
I tell you there never was a truer saying than "Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, ​wealthy, and wise"—I've certainly found it true in my own case—and we drove out for a few rounds of golf—
Now you take golf. By golly, if anybody'd told me fifteen years ago that I'd be out on the links chasing a little white pill around, I'd 've told 'em they were crazy, but let me tell you, I found one of the best ways to get acquainted with customers was to play round with 'em, and I saw what a mossback I'd been, and I've got so I like the game itself a good deal—take like my playing there at Troy even when I wasn't making any valuable contacts—and even though the weather was pretty chilly and—
Seems to me that on the whole the weather has gotten warmer than it used to be when we were kids. You read in the papers how it hasn't changed materially, but they can say what they want to, don't you remember how doggone cold it used to be mornings when we had to get up and chase off to school, and now it seems like we don't have any more old-fashioned winters—may​be that's one reason why the kids today aren't as self-reliant as we were—
But to get back to my subject. As I say, I certainly did enjoy my stay with Walt as I hadn't expected to, especially his stories and inside information about the War, he was a lieutenant in the quartermaster's corps at Camp Devon—
You know, there's a lot of false ideas about the War. I don't want to criticize General Pershing—I know he ranks among the greatest generals we've ever had, right along with Grant and Lee and Israel Putnam, but same time what we ought to done, what I'd 've done if I'd been running things, was to march right straight through to Berlin, and make them Germans suffer good—suffer like we did.
I was explaining this to my wife, and she says, "Why, Lowell T. Schmaltz," she says, "I'm ashamed of you! Don't we know some Germans that are awful' nice folks?"
"You don't know the Germans like I do," I says to her. "They haven't got any forward-looking ​ideas. They believe in rule by tyranny and despotism and compulsion and all that, and if they haven't understood our democratic ideas, they ought to 've been forced to, that's what they ought to 've been!" I told her. "But same time you got to hand it to 'em—they certainly have buckled down to work ever since the War. Be a good thing if our workmen worked like that, 'stead of watching the clock and thinking about a raise all the time!"
But make a long story short, we certainly enjoyed our stay, and we went on to New York.
I was kind of sore all the time I was in New York, though. These damn? New Yorkers—I hope none of you gentlemen come from New York—they seem to think they run the nation, and what I always say is, as a matter of fact they're the most provincial town in the country! Give me Chicago every time.
You see, when I go to Chicago, in the first place I always stay at the Hotel Grand Imperial Palace, it's a nice quiet little place and the clerks know ​me and try to give me a little service, but in those big New York hotels, they're so darn' independent, you'd think they were doing you a favor.
Then when it comes to business—
In Chicago I usually do the bulk, you might say, of my business with Starbright, Horner, and-Dodd; and Billy Dodd himself looks after me, and say, there's a man that it's a pleasure to do business with, a square-shooter if ever there was one, and always got a good story and a two-bit cigar for you, and acts like he was glad to see you, and he isn't one of those fellows to throw seven kind of cat-fits if maybe a fellow is temporarily a little short and wants an extension of a couple of days or a month or so. Yes sir, and many's the good lunch I've had with Billy in the old Palmer House before they tore it down, and though of course this new Palmer House is you might say a regular palace, still, there was kind of an atmosphere about the old place, and say, they certainly did know how to cook steak and fried onions to a turn. Um! And oyster stew. But in New York—
​All this darn' fancy French food, and the prices—
"My God," I says to one of these smart-aleck headwaiters, or maybe he was what they call a captain, anyway he was the fellow that takes the order and then he hands it on to the regular waiter. "My God," I said to him, when I looks at the prices on the bill of fare, "I just come in here to eat," I says. "I don't want to buy the hotel!"
And just the same way in the business world.
Why say, the firm that was handling these new mimeograph machines, they said they were behind on their orders and they couldn't make a delivery right away. Oh, that's all right, I told 'em—why couldn't they fill my order and keep some other fellow waiting?
No sir, they said, they wouldn't do it. They were just naturally arbitrary about it, and when I tried to make 'em understand that with the class and volume of business that I do, they ought to be willing to make some concessions, they acted like a bunch of human icicles. Some day I'm going ​to write a letter to the New York newspapers and tell 'em what a real he-American from the Middle West thinks about their town—
The noise, and traffic so thick you can't get anywhere, and the outrageous prices and—
And no home-life. Folks all out in the evening, hitting it up at these night clubs and everything. Now you take us, back home, for instance. Evenings, except maybe when I have to be at the lodge or some Kiwanis committee meetings, or maybe Delmerine or Robby are at the movies or a party or something, we all just settle down around the radio and have a real old-fashioned homey time together. But not in New York! No sir! I swear, I don't know what the nation's coming to—
And too many foreigners—fellows with Wop names and Hunky names and Lord knows what all—and this corrupt politics—
Oh say, speaking of politics, if I may interrupt myself a moment and take the risk of straying from my story, I got to tell you what I heard at the Kiwanis luncheon just this past week. Our ​congressman, and I think it's pretty generally conceded even right in Washington that he's got one of the ablest minds in the entire House of Representatives, he got back from an extensive investigation of the European status—spent six weeks in Germany, France, and Italy, and he gave it as his measured opinion that all these countries are so prosperous now that we certainly ought to press for the payment of our debt in full! Why, he said that in the better class of hotels in those countries, you could get just as good food and nearly as expensive as in New York itself! And they complaining about being poor!
But to get back to my story, I didn't think so much of New York, though we did have one dandy evening—we ran into some folks from home at the hotel lobby, and we all went out to a Chink restaurant and threw in some of the best chicken chow mein that I ever ate in my life, and then we went to a movie that I knew was good because I'd seen it in Zenith—Hoot Gibson in a crackajack western film.
​But Delmerine, she liked New York, and my Lord, how that girl did keep nagging and teasing and complaining—
She wanted to go to one of these night clubs. I pointed out to her that all day long while I had to work, talking to a lot of different firms, she and her mother were free to enjoy themselves—go to a matinée or look over the stores and shop a little (though I didn't encourage 'em to buy too much—"Why not wait till you get back home—the stores there are just as up-to-date as New York, far's I can see," I pointed out to 'em). But she kept insisting, and her mother more or less agreed with her, and so one night I took 'em to a swell night club that was recommended to me by one of the bell-boys at the hotel, cute little tad, knew the town like a book.
Well, thinks I, here's where I have a punk evening, but I want to admit that I was wrong. Not but what it was expensive, and I certainly wouldn't want to go to one of those places more'n once or twice a year, but say, that was some place!
​First off, we was all kind of disappointed. We drives up to a house in the Fifties, just an ordinary-looking place, and all dark.
"This can't be the place," I says to the taxi driver.
"Sure, this is the joint all right," he says.
"Are you sure?" I says.
"Sure, you bet," he says. "I've driven lots of folks here. You just ring that basement bell and they'll let you in," he says.
Well, I figured he probably knew his business, so my wife and Delmerine and I, we all piled out of the taxi, and I went and rang the bell at the basement door—well, they call it the basement; it was really practically the ground floor, but this was one of those houses that they got so many of in New York, or used to have anyway, though now a lot of 'em are being torn down to make way for modern apartment houses—graystone houses they call 'em, and you go up a flight of steps from the street to the front door, so the door to this basement floor, as they call it, was really kind of under ​these steps practically on the ground level, only of course you go down into a kind of areaway that's a step or maybe it might have been two steps below the pavement level but not more than that if I remember rightly, and there was a kind of iron grilled door, but, 's I said, there weren't any lights or anything that we could see, and I wondered if the taxi-driver could 've been right and—
But I rung the bell and pretty soon, sure enough, the door opened, and by golly there was a fellow in one of these funny Lord High Admiral uniforms, and I says to him, "Is this the Nouvelle Desire—" That was the name of the joint I was looking for—"Is this the Nouvelle Desire?" I says.
"Yes, but I haven't the pleasure of knowing your face," he says—you know, some highfalutin comeback like that.
Well, I kidded him along—I told him it wasn't such a hard face to know when you put your mind to it. Delmerine—she stood right back of me, and I must say, maybe it was just because she was my ​girl, but she wore a kind of light violet dress and. shiny spangles and gold slippers, and say, she certainly looked as elegant as anybody there that night, and my wife wasn't such a slouch herself, for a Mid Western girl and—
But as I was saying, Delmerine was standing right near me, and she kind of whispers to me, "Say, you hadn't ought to kid the servants like that."
But I knew this guy in the uniform wasn't any ordinary servant and I wanted to show him I was just as used to the Gay Life as anybody (of course I was wearing my dress-suit) and—
But anyway, he calls what I figured out to be the assistant manager—nice-looking fellow in a dress-suit, kind of dark-complected, Italian I guess, but a nice-spoken fellow.
He explained that this Nouvelle Desire was a club and they couldn't let in nobody that didn't belong, but I introduced him to the wife and Delmerine, and I explained we come from Zenith and was only in town for about a week, and I ​showed him my Elks card, and he looked us over good, and he said maybe he could fix it—the regular membership cost two hundred bucks a head a year, but finally he let me have a temporary membership for that week for only five bucks a head.
So we got in all safe and—
Maybe you couldn't see any lights outside, but inside, oh boy! It was fixed up as elegant as if it was the Vanderbilts' ballroom. They'd turned the whole parlor floor—that is, the floor above the basement, I guess they had the kitchen and all like that on the basement floor—
And here was a funny thing: this assistant manager—he and I got to be quite chummy; he told me to call him Nick, and I said he was to call me Low, but he said that was against the rules—and Nick told me something that may surprise you gentlemen as it certainly surprised me at the time: he told me that they did all their cooking by electricity!
Then as I say, there was this kind of ballroom. ​Halfway up, the wall was all red satin or silk of something, with a lot of what they call Modern Art decoration, or that's what Nick called it—all kinds of zigzags and big flowers and everything in gold; and then above that the walls was all hung with flowers. I found they was artificial flowers, but they looked so real you had to touch 'em before you'd believe it. And some of the tables was in kind of booths fixed up so that they looked like grape arbors and all like that. And at the end of the room there was some great big yellow marble columns—it looked like real genuwine marble, though it may not have been—in front of where the orchestra played—and say, the boys in that orchestra certainly were some jazz babies all right, all coons, but they had a regular high-class musical education, Nick told me later, and the fellow that played the saxophone—say, if they got anybody better'n him in Paul Whiteman's band, I want to hear him, that's all— Why say, he could make ​that ole saxophone sound like a fog horn or a sick cow or anything he wanted.
Well, before we got settled down—there weren't many folks there yet—Nick took me aside and said they had a regular sure-enough old-fashioned bar on the floor above, and he thought maybe he could fix it so I could go up and get outside of a little real liquor. The rules of the club, or so he said anyway, the rules of the club made every fellow buy wine at his table, and when it comes to fizz, of course it's a grand high-class wine, but it ain't got the authority like hootch, like the fellow says.
Well, make a long story short, he went away and he fixed it so we could go up to the bar.
I'd just intended to let Delmerine and her mother have some ginger ale up there, but seems they didn't stock any soft drinks, and anyway Delmerine put up a holler.
"I want a cocktail," she says, "and I'll bet so does Mamma, if she tells the truth. Maybe we'll never get to another night club again," she says. ​"And besides," she says, "you've let me taste a sip of your cocktail when you've had 'em at home. And think of what my bunch will say if I go back home and tell 'em we went to a night club and I couldn't have a cocktail. I'm not a kid," she says.
Well, anyway, I kicked, and I pointed out her mother didn't want any—my wife's a great believer in prohibition—but her mother, doggone her, she went and laid right down on me and didn't back me up— Just kind of giggled, and said she wouldn't mind one herself, just this once. So, make a long story short, we all had a cocktail— Mame took a Bronx, and Delmerine took a side-car, if I remember rightly, and I ordered a Martini and then I said, "By golly, I believe I'll have a Manhattan. Must be five years since I've had a Manhattan cocktail." And so I had a Manhattan. And then I sneaked in a couple highballs while Mame and the girl was in the ladies' dressing-room, and say, by that time I certainly did feel primed for one high, wide and fancy evening.
​And I want to say that, think what you may of New York, we certainly had said evening.
Nick had fixed us up a nice little table almost right next to where they danced.
We looked around and there was a nice-looking lot of people there—they was just coming in. Delmerine was just saying, "Oh, I wish we knew somebody here—I won't have anybody to dance with except you, Papa," and I was informing her that I was regarded as by golly just as good a dancer as anybody at the Country Club, when— Say, you could 've knocked me down with a feather! Yes sir, I hears a familiar voice, and there stands Sam Geierstein of the Mammoth Clothing Company of Zenith—fellow I'd often met at the Athletic Club.
Now there's a whole lot of fellows I'd rather seen than Sam. To tell the truth, just between ourselves, he hasn't got any too good a reputation for square dealing, and I've heard some mighty queer rumors about the way him and his lady secretary carry on. But same time—you know how ​it is when you're away from home—especially in a city like New York where they're such a chilly lot of stiffs: familiar face sure does look good to you.
So we invites Sam to sit down, and say, I will say one thing for him, he certainly did insist on buying his share of wine and then some. And he sure could dance. I never did like his looks—kind of too dark and good-looking, and big black eyes like you don't really like to see in a real he-male, but he certainly did spin Delmerine and even the wife around that ole floor all right. And me, after I'd got a little champagne into my system, I guess I wouldn't have hardly beefed much even if he'd kissed Delmerine—
Not that he did anything like that, you understand; he acted like a perfect gentleman, you understand; and once when I was dancing with Mame, and I kind of slipped and almost fell down—they had that floor altogether too slippery for any use—why, it was Sam that grabbed me and kept me from falling.
​Though I don't like the way he's been hanging around the house since we been back in Zenith—seems he's got a wife somewhere only they're separated. Delmerine, she says I'm crazy. She says she just discusses music with Sam—seems he knows a lot about it. But I don't like her being out late—
Oh, I guess I'm an old crank. But Del is so young, and she thinks she knows everything but she's innocent as a baby, but— Oh, I'm a regular fusser. But anyway, we certainly did have one large round time that evening—evening, huh! Say, we certainly were high-rollers for once! I'll bet it was three o'clock before we hit the hay. I remember—
It was kind o' comic! Here was Mame—that's my wife—supposed to be a good respectable dame, and me, a deacon in the church, and us coming down Broadway at three G.M. singing "We Won't Go Home Until Morning!"
You see, Sam—he's got the nerve of the devil—he picked up a couple from Fort Worth, Texas ​(and maybe she wasn't some baby; say, she had all the regular New York dames there beat a mile), and somehow, I don't exactly remember how, we got acquainted with another couple from San José, California, a gentleman that was in the fruit ranching business and his wife and son, he took a shine to Delmerine; and up in the bar I got talking to a gentleman and lady from Kansas City, Missouri—or it may have been Kansas City, Kansas. I can't exactly remember, at this late date—and the whole lot of us carried on like we'd always known each other, dancing and laughing and drinking toasts and singing and drinking and cutting up— Say! But I hate to think of what it cost me. But as I told my wife, that's the way of it, in New York.
But I don't need to tell you gentlemen about New York. Probably you know it better'n I do, and you want me to sing my little song and get it finished and get on to Washington and my experiences at the White House. Yes sir, the less said ​about New York the better. Money-mad, that's what the New Yorkers are.
If I wanted to sacrifice other more worth-while things, like our home-life and friendships and reading worth-while literature, and getting in a good fish every summer— And let me tell you that they can talk about Canada all they want to, but if they can show me any better fishing than I get up in Northern Michigan, right within you'd hardly call it more'n an overnight ride from Zenith, why just let 'em show it to me, that's all!
But the way I look at it, a fellow ought to be prosperous for his family's sake and that of his own position in the community, but money-making can be overdone, and what I always say is, Ideals before Dollars every time.
So that's what I think of New York and— And then we packed up and went on to Washington, and say, Delmerine pretended she didn't care, but ​she was so excited over the prospect of having a chat with the President that she couldn't hardly sit still on the train. Well, so was I—hadn't seen Cal for so many years. I got to thinking maybe he might invite us to lunch or supper, but still, I knew that was unreasonable—having to entertain so many people—ambassadors, and officials of the Order of Moose, and so on—but I guess I was pretty excited just the same.
I don't know how well you gentlemen know Washington, but the new station there is very handsome and up-to-date in every respect, with a great big open space—the Plaza I believe they call it—in front; and what I'd never known is, you can see the dome of the Capitol right from the front of the station. I tell you I got a mighty big thrill out of that.
Well, Mame wanted us to get a room in the hotel first and get washed up, but I says, "No sir, we better see the President first and see what his plans are; we'll just keep the taxi waiting and I don't care if it costs a dollar and a half; 'tisn't often ​in your life that you're going to sit in with a President of these United States!"
So we got into a taxi and we started off all het up, and all of a sudden I says to my wife, "Say, do you notice anything funny about this taxi?"
"Why no," she says, "I don't know's I do; it looks all right to me. Why?"
"Looks all right!" I says. "I should say it does! Do you mean to tell me you don't notice something different about this taxi?"
"Why no," she says.
"Well, what make of car is it?" I says.
Of course Delmerine has to horn in. "It's a Studebaker, isn't it?" she says.
"Oh it is, is it, Miss Smarty!" I says. "My God, and me teaching you to drive! It is not a Studebaker, and it isn't a Cadillac, no, and it isn't a flivver either! It's a Buick. See the significance?"
Well, they both stared at me—couldn't get the idea at all—just like women, even the brightest of 'em.
"Can't you see?" I says. "Here's the Buick, the ​biggest-selling six-cylinder car in the United States . if not in the world. And yet how often do you see a Buick taxi? Not very often. Ever think of that? Yes sir, it's a mighty peculiar thing, and I'm sure I don't know why it is. At least I'm practically certain it's a Buick—of course with a taxi body on it—I didn't happen to notice the hood, but from the looks of the dashboard—Anyway—"
So I tapped on the window, and the driver—he probably thought we were just ordinary tourists that wanted to see the town, and we were passing some building or other and he just hardly turns his head and he says, "It's the Pensions Building." (Or it may have been the Patent Building—I didn't pay much attention, I was so worked up and excited about seeing the President, and I can't exactly remember at this late date.)
"No," I hollers to him, "what I want to know is: isn't this a Buick taxi?"
"Yeh," he says.
"There!" I says to the girls. "What did I tell you!"
​You bet!
So we came to the White House and—
Now even you gentlemen that 've been to Washington and seen the White House may not know that the offices, including the President's own private office, are in wings stretching out on either side of the old main structure. The wings are new, I should think, and they're so low that you wouldn't hardly notice 'em from the street in front—not hardly know they were there unless you'd happened, like I was, to be privileged to enter 'em.
So there we came up the avenue to that famous old place—
I tell you it was a mighty moving thing to think of the famous men that had inhabited that structure. Grant and McKinley and Harding and Garfield and everybody! By golly, as I told the Kiwanis when I addressed them about my trip, it certainly gave a fellow inspiration. For what after all is a greater inspiration than the lives of our heroes—
​That reminds me that recently—why, in fact, it was just a couple of nights ago, and a neighbor and I were having a little visit, and he says to me, "Lowell, who do you think have been the greatest heroes of the United States since 1900 and the geniuses?"
Well, a question like that certainly makes a fellow think, and him and I, we began making lists, and it just happens I've still got mine in my pocket here, and here's how I figured out our leading intellects:
Coolidge, Harding, Wilson (though I'm a Republican), Ford, Lindbergh, Billy Sunday, Pershing, Roosevelt, John Roach Stratton, Judge Gary and—
Now here's a couple more names that may surprise you gentlemen; maybe you never looked at it like this. I figure that what you might call the arts ought to be represented, and I put in Anne ​Nichols—say, the author of a play like "Abie's Irish Rose," that can run five years, is in my mind—maybe it's highbrow and impractical to look at it that way, but the way I see it, she's comparable to any business magnate, and besides, they say she's made as much money as Jack Dempsey.
And here's a name that may surprise you still more: Samuel Gompers!
Yes, I knew that would surprise you, my putting in a man that lots of folks think he merely stood for union labor and labor disturbances and all those kind of Bolshevik activities. But it seems that Gompers—a fellow, some kind of professor he was, was explaining this to us at the Kiwanis Club here just recently—Gompers stood right square against labor disturbances. He thought that laboring men ought to have their rights, and I suppose that's true, but the way he looked at it, he wanted employees and employers and the general public to join hands in one great brotherhood for ​the glory of the Union and the extension of our markets into lands now unfairly monopolized by England and Germany. Yes sir!
So, as I say, we drove up to the White House—
I'd told the chauffeur to go right up to the front door—just like I'd expect Cal Coolidge to come right up to my front door, if he came to call on me in Zenith. I didn't understand then about the arrangement of the White House.
But there was some kind of cop at the gate and he says, "What do you want, please?"
"What do I want, officer?" I says. "What do I want? Why, I just want to call on the President, that's all!" I says. "I'm an old friend of his, that's all!" I says.
Well, I explains, and he tells me the proper caper is to go round to the office entrance, so I says all right; I'd be the last, I says to him, as a friend of the President, to want to break any proper regulations.
Well, make a long story short, at last there we were, in one of the waiting-rooms to the Presi​dent's own offices, and a gentleman came in—fine-looking gentleman he was, all dressed up like Sunday morning, in a cutaway coat and striped pants and seems he was practically the President's first main secretary, and I presented my wife and Delmerine to him, and I explained about the President and me being classmates.
"I know the President's a busy man, but I'd like a look at the old kid," I tells him, "and I kind of thought I'd like to have my wife and daughter shake hands with him."
Well sir, he understood perfectly.
He went right in and saw the President—didn't keep me waiting one minute, no sir, not hardly a minute.
He came back and said the President was awful' sorry he couldn't have us come in just that second, but seems he was all tied up with an important international conference about—I think it was about Geneva he said—and would I wait. This secretary was mighty nice, too; he didn't let us sit there like bumps on a log; he sat and visited with us, and ​that's how I had the chance to get the real lowdown on so many of the Presidents opinions and activities, but I don't want you gentlemen to give any of this stuff to the newspapers.
I asked this secretary, Mr. Jones his name was—I said to him, "What does the President think about disarmament, Mr. Jones?"
"Well, it just happens," he says, "that I can tell you in the President's own words. I heard him talking to the Secretary of State," he says—say, maybe that didn't give me a kick, sitting in as it were on a conference between the President and the Secretary of State! But anyway: "I heard him talking to the Secretary," Mr. Jones told me, "and he said, 'Frank, big navies cost a lot of money and in my opinion it would be a saving if we could get the different nations to reduce them.'"
"Well, well, I'm mighty glad to find that out, Mr. Jones," I said, "and it confirms my own opinion about disarmament. Say, tell me," I says, "how does the President live, in his personal life? What does he take for breakfast?"
​Well, Mr. Jones explained that the President took a simple breakfast just like the rest of us—just some coffee and toast and eggs and porridge and so on. I was mighty proud and glad to hear that Cal was unspoiled by all his fame and was still just the same simple direct fellow he'd been when we were chums.
"What does the President think of the situation in China?" I asked Mr. Jones.
"Well, I think I can say without violating any confidences that contrary to the opinion of certain senators, the President feels the situation in China is serious and in fact almost critical and that—but this mustn't go any farther," Mr. Jones told me, "he feels decidedly that while the rights and properties of the Great Powers must be safeguarded, yet we must consider patiently and fairly the rights of the Chinese themselves."
"Well sir, I certainly am interested to hear that," I told him. "There's no question about it. That's exactly how I feel myself."
You see, I'd had a kind of you might call it ​a special opportunity of getting the real inside dope about the Chinese situation and the Bolshevik influence there. I heard a missionary, just recently back from the scene of disturbance in China, speak at the Wednesday Evening Supper at our church—the Pilgrim Congregational Church of Zenith—Dr. G. Prosper Edwards is the pastor, very famous pulpit orator, you've quite probably heard him on the radio, tunes in on WWWL every second Sunday morning at eleven-fifteen, very eloquent man and a rip-snorting good scholar, too, but very liberal. As he always says, he's more than ready to fellowship with any Christian body no matter what their differences in theology, providing they merely accept the fundamental and indisputable elements of Christianity, such as the Virgin Birth and the proven fact of after-life.
I tell you how I feel about religion, anyway.
I'm a Congregationalist myself, and it isn't for one second just because I happened to be born one, as one of these smart-aleck infidels was trying ​to prove to me one day, but because of my deep reverence for the great leaders of our church, like Jonathan Edwards and Roger Baldwin—no, come to think of it, he was a Baptist, wasn't he, that Rhode Island guy?
But anyway: just the same today: fellows like Newell Dwight Hillis and S. Parkes Cadman, that during the War they did as much to win the struggle for world-wide democracy as any soldier, the way they showed up the secret plans of Germany to dominate the world—and the way Dr. Cadman writes this column in the newspapers; say, he knows just about everything, and he can clear up your troubles about anything whether it's an incurable sickness or who wrote Shakespeare—yes sir, a real big typical American leader.
But same time, way I look at it, the other denominations—the Methodists and Baptists and Presbyterians and Campbellites—they're all working together to make a greater and purer America.
​Our generation, I guess we still got a lot of the Old Harry in us. Me, I admit, I smoke and sometimes I take a little drink—but never to excess; if there's anything I despise it's a man that can't hold his liquor—and I do like a nice drive on Sunday, and sometimes I cuss a little, and I guess I ain't above looking at a pretty ankle even yet. But it's my firm belief—maybe you gentlemen never thought about it this way—if we'll just support the churches and give the preachers a chance, a generation will come which won't even want to do those things, and then America will stand forth before the world such a nation as has never been seen, yes sir, and I'm mighty glad to fellowship with Methodists or—
Not that I think so much of these Christian Scientists and Seventh Day Adventists and all them, though. They carry things too far, and I don't believe in going to extremes in anything; and as for the Catholics—I hope none of you gentlemen are Catholics and I wouldn't want this to go any farther, but I've always felt the Catholics ​were too tolerant toward drinking and smoking and so aren't, you might say, really hardly typically American at all.
And as to religion in general, they tell me there's a lot of smart-aleck highbrows today that are calling the truth of Christianity in question. Well, I may not be any theologian, but I wish I could meet one of these fellows, and believe me, I'd settle his hash.
"Took here," I'd tell him; "in the first place, it stands to reason, don't it, that fellows specially trained in theology, like the preachers, know more than us laymen, don't it? And in the second, if the Christian religion has lasted two thousand years and is today stronger than ever—just look, for instance, at that skyscraper church they're building in New York—is it likely that a little handful of you smart galoots are going to be able to change it?"
I guess they never thought of that. Trouble with fellows like agnostics is that you simply can't get 'em to stop and think and use their minds!
​And what have they got to put in the place of religion? Know what the trouble with those fellows is? They're destructive and not constructive!
But as I was saying, our church has a regular Wednesday Evening Supper, before prayer-meeting, and say, the ladies of the church certainly do serve one of the tastiest suppers you ever ate, and for only forty cents-Hamburg steak with Spanish sauce, or creamed chipped beef, or corn beef and cabbage, and sometimes ice cream for dessert, all A 1. And they usually have a speaker, and this evening I was speaking of, the speaker that spoke on China was a missionary, and he gave us the real low-down on China, and he told us it was fierce the way the Chinks were carrying on, and not respecting either their trade treaties-and what a damn' fool thing that was, because here they had a chance to get in contact with America and England and get civilized and give up worshiping idols— But he showed a real Christian spirit. He said that even though the Chinks had practically kicked him out, he believed they ought to be ​allowed to have another chance to try to run their own country.
Well, I could see that was fair, and I was real interested to see the President agreed with him in this point of view, and then I asked Mr. Jones—
"Mr. Jones," I said, "what's the real truth about the President's fishing? Is he a good fisherman?" I said.
"He's one of the best. His catch always compares favorably with that of any other member of the party, when he sets his mind to it, but you must remember that he's constantly weighed down by the cares of state," Mr. Jones said.
"Yes, I can see that," I told him, "and personally, I think it's a shame for some of these newspapers that haven't got anything better to write to make fun of him. Say, another thing," I asked him, "does the President belong to any of the service clubs—Rotary and Kiwanis and so on?"
"No, in his position,' Mr. Jones explained to me, "in his position he couldn't hardly discriminate between them, but I think I'm not betraying ​any secret when I say that the President has the highest admiration for the great service and ideals of all these organizations."
Well, I was mighty glad to hear that, and I think you gentlemen will be, too, whether you belong to 'em or not. For after all, what organizations are doing a greater good and providing more real happiness today than the service clubs, all of 'em, though I myself am a Kiwanian and I can't help feeling that maybe our own organization has got the edge on the other fellows—we aren't as darned snobbish as these Rotarians, and yet we aren't, you might say, as common as the Civitans and the Lions and— Yes sir!
Think what these clubs provide. A chance for a lot of the most responsible and forward-looking men of the community to get together once a week, and not only have a high old time, with all the dignity of our positions checked at the door, calling each other by our first names— Think of 'what that means! Say here's some high mucka​muck of a judge; for that hour or so I call him "Pete," and slap him on the back and kid him about his family, and stands to reason that any man enjoys having a chance to let down and be human like that.
And then the good we do! Why say, just this past year our Zenith Kiwanians have put up not less than two hundred and sixty-three highway markers within forty miles of Zenith, and we gave the kids at an orphan asylum a dandy auto ride and free feed. And believe me it was one fine ad for the Kiwanians, because we took the kids out in trucks, and every truck had on it a great big red sign, "Free Outing for the Unfortunate Kiddies, Provided Free by Zenith Kiwanis Club."
To say nothing of the fine speakers we have each week—the mayor and cancer specialists and authors and vaudeville artists and everybody. And these soreheads that make fun of—
But be that as it may, I was mighty glad to hear the President speak like that and to get his real ​inside view, and so I asks Mr. Jones, "What's, uh—what's the President's views on taxation, if it isn't impertinent to ask?"
Now you gentlemen will be interested to learn what Mr. Jones told me, because of course that's one of the most important topics of the day, and Jones spoke right up, without hesitation:
"I know for a fact," he told me, "that the President feels that the burdens of taxation should be so equably distributed that they shall lay no undue burden on the poor and unfortunate, yet at the same time they must in no sense be prejudicial to honest business interests or cramp the necessary conduct and expansion of commerce."
And some fly-by-nights claim that the President isn't a deep thinker!
And then— Delmerine had been on pins and needles at the prospect of talking with the President; couldn't hardly keep still in her chair. Mr. Jones was real nice to her, and I certainly was proud of the way one of our home girls could answer up to a man in official position like that.
​"So you come from Zenith," he says to her. "Do you like it?"
"Oh you bet," she said. "I just think Zenith is the nicest city in America. Of course I'd rather live in New York, but my, do you know we have the finest park system in the United States?"
"Is that a fact!" he says. "No, I didn't know that. And I guess you like to Charleston," he says. "Or have you gone out for the black bottom? Do you like it?"
"Do I?" she says. "Oh boy! I'd show you, but I guess this isn't hardly the place."
"No, I'm afraid it isn't," he says, and we all four bust right out laughing together—wasn't that a comical idea—to dance the Charleston in the President's offices!
I was just going to ask Mr. Jones how the President felt about socialism when there was a messenger come out and called him in and he was gone about a couple minutes, it couldn't have been more than that, and he come back, and say, he did look real sorry.
​"I've got terrible news," he told me. "The President was just ready to see you when the British ambassador come in with some important business that'll take a couple of hours, and then he has to hustle down to the Mayflower—that's his yacht—and be gone maybe four-five days, on an important secret conference. But he specially sent me to tell you that he's heart-broken he can't see you, and he hopes you'll drop in any time you're in Washington."
So you gentlemen can see that it isn't by accident but by real thinking and good fellowship that President Coolidge—yes, or any other president we've had recently—maintains his position, and I hope I haven't bored you and now I'll dry up and let some other fellow talk and—
But just to speak of socialism a moment. I'm willing to give every man a fair square deal, but when it comes to supporting a lot of loafers, the way I look at it is that the constructive, practical people like ourselves, who control the country, ought, you might say—
* ↑ Mr. Calvin Coolidge was the President of the United States of North America from 1923 to 1929. He fulfilled many of the soundest American ideals, and he stands, along with the Ford motor car, the Rev. Dr. William Sunday, and the Saturday Evening Post, as the symbol of his era. Copyright, 1927, by The American Mercury, Inc.
* ↑ A professional athlete renowned circ. 1926.
* ↑ First of the American ducal families.
* ↑ A clergyman often known, about 1927, as "the Christian Voltaire of America."
* ↑ A lady formerly a queen.
* ↑ A former American cabinet minister.
* ↑ Three distinguished writers of fiction of the first quarter of the twentieth century in America.
* ↑ Another celebrated athlete, much influenced by G. Bernard Shaw.
* ↑ The Ysaye and Toscanini of America.
* ↑ The Protestant Pope.
* ↑ The editor has not been able to discover who this person was.
* ↑ A famous actor.
* ↑ The Protestant Erasmus, but a man of broader culture and greater positiveness.