The Ocala banner. (Ocala, Marion County, Fla.) 1883-194?, 1911-07-28
CHAPTER VII.

mcst important; the senate thought it
was the most important with John
Henderson and McCreary sitting in
the S. E. corner of the room, each
causually smoking a two4for-a-quar-
ter cigar like blase English peers
watching race; the house thought it.
self most important with Wells lean
ing over the desk, his unlit and rusty
corn-cob resting on his copy of the
parliamentary manuel; the supreme
court thought that it was the most i'm
portant lying in wait down stairs to
= declare unconstitutional and void any
legislation that might have escaped
the sweeping veto of Mr.. Albert
Washington Gil. All of this being
like the classic disputes between the
feet and hands and eyes and ears and
nose and mouth as to which was most
important. | would have settled that
dispute last named by deciding in
favor OF the tongue and larnyX and
teeth-in favor of the mouth. I de-
eide the dispute between the COVER
nor and the senate and the house
and the court adjudging that the
most important was Bauskett and
Reese and Felkel and Berrell and
Bird of the Georgian; these made up
the mouth of the session of the legis-
lature. What was the use of talking
to Littell and Summers and Gold
stein and others, if you could not
reach Mr.. Smith down at Lake City
and Brother Jones, of Poodle Hollow?
Reese and Bauskett and Felkel at
tended to that. These people sitting
at the table there, Bauskett ct al,
just outside the railing were the big
ear and mouth of Florida. To get
them to scribble while you were
talking spelled the childhood of
fame, viz: notoriety.
And the greatest of these was Baus-
kett. He represented the paper of
the largest circulation, the Times
Union. He had been up on the noun
tain at Washington. He was proba-
ly the diplomat who arranged the
sweet line of publicity that Mr.. Tala-
ferro had. Did you ever see anything
in the Associated Press dispatches or
in the weekly Post and the other
great journals that reflected on Mr..
TaliaferrO till he was defeated and it
did not make any more difference?
No, Bauskett did that. He was Mr..
rs private secretary. Bauskett is a
word factory. I was able to pass but
two or three over his extended hand,
just out of his reach. One was orch
idisiac," another was "microcosm,"
another was ''bicamemeral," another
was "cunaeculum,' each of these got
his goat. But he hammered me down ,
with 1cabilitudinousity." His
word, though, was not in any diction-
airy. Besides these qualifications, |
Bauskett could stand more cocktails /
than Reese. Bauskett is both little I,
physically and ugly; he trails around
in a rear locotar-ataxia manner, gone |
out cigarett dropping from the mouth,
looking like the present lord OF the
chief Turkish harem, my sad and Ian
guild friend Mehemed V. Bauskett re-
mains keyed-up, to be witty; the
strain is terrible on him and on every
one else. He is pretty quick but has
no original wit. He is insolent and
impairment and sassy and patron
izizng. Taking him la lin all Bauskett
is a vicious. little, malevolent, pep
perry, cynical, snobbish, wasp.
That is one side of the picture,
probably overdrawn as you will infer
when 1 tell you that once Berrell said
to me, "Bauskett says you are very
ordinary and commonplace
It is strange but true, that we can
forget lots of hammers to use III
knocking even the angels when the
angel does not do to suit us; does
not take toward us the attitude that
an old "befo the war" negro takes
when he wants a quarter of dollar
with which to buy drink. When w.
J. Bryan proves that he can create
and deliver a more splendid Grafton
than any one in the convention at
Chicago then we flatter him with
Bourke Cochran, or this man or that;
but when he demonstrates the pos
session of superior oratorical ability
over the spell binders in the United
States someone in France is used 10
bludgeon him into a second place;
and if his comb cannot be cut in this
fashion, Cicero and Demonsthenes are
logged in to bring him down to COM
mon clay. If there was no GOD one
would be invented as a CLUB WITH
which to dwarf these.
Caesar who straddle the world like