Evening star., 1925-04-26

was afraid of. 81 guess I'd be afraid
of young Milt in your place, George
/ told him. I'D be afraid he'd talk
her into taking him. whether she
wanted to or not. They say he can
talk a coon down from a tree!"
But George shook his head. mo.
sir" he said. I'm afraid neither of
us has much chance"
Whats the trouble?' / asked him.
IF Milt can't talk her into II l should
think you'd have a pretty clear field.
l don't see who else would stand in
your way around here.
That's the trouble" he told me.
''It isn't any one from around here. -
And ] could see that Josie had just
let him know there wasn't any chance
for him, because she was going TO
marry some out-of-town man.
He was an usher at Josie's wedding;
but Milt Letting went out of town, and
they said he was mighty upset. Josie
married d Frenchman she'd met
abroad; a professor of some sort he
was, named Leclerc, and she went
over there to live, and stayed there.
After the wedding, George Brooks and
Milt Letting went around with the
young people the same as ever, but
l never heard that either of them
showed particular interest in any OF
the girls.
NOV, as it happened, when George
= had been twice in the Legislature,
and made a good record there, he was
the man we old-timers at headquar-
ters picked to run for Congress to
succeed fat Joe Eli Smith, who had
been our districts representative for
nd ivf
in Washington except eat oysters at
Harvey's until he couldn't walk.
Milton Letting had the nerve to
come out against him for the nomi-
nation. He didn't have a chance on
earth-in fact, everybody of intelli-
gence in the whole State considered
that he covered himself so absolutely
with ridicule that he'd never be able
to hold his head up again. His
speeches were just scream, as the
girls say, and the newspapers had so
much fun with them that what he
called his Campaign" got to be joke
all over the country.
AIilt was mixer" from the start.
After he got out of college he made
it his business to know everybody in
town, especially the riffraff-and
there's an awful lot of riffraff in a
city of 250 ,090, which was about our
population then. Milt mixed around
with them, and with respectable work
ingmen. too: he mixed around with
just everybody, and he picked up a
kind of roughneck talk that he could
use when he wanted TO. Milt could
go right up to that sort and talk
''youse-guys" stuff with the best or
worst of them, and when he spoke
to an audience of that sort he'd slip
in a few expressions of their own
dialect. 1t made 'em think he was
their kind of man, you see.
Boys" he'd say, ARE you going to
send me to Congress or are you going
TO send that cold -blooded, d-gloved
little gilt-edged. calling-card. c.
Thomas Brooks that lives up there on
the North Side and has to have his
pants pressed by nurse every morn
ing before he crawls out of the hay?
Honest, boys, if you send him to Con
gress. he'll spend half his time getting
his little kid gloves washed in gaso-
line and the other half he'll put in
trying to teach the sergeant at arms
to turkey trot.
Just you go up to his house and
holler or whistle for him, or give him
the high sign the way you would a
neighbor-why. he'd send some sway
backed English dead-eye in a solid
gold livery out and tell you to go on
home and stop being naughty,
naughty: or else he'd have a couple
Of bulls shoe you away from his part
of town. You better put the jinx
on that pair of pink kid gloves, boys,
and III see that you get yours out
of it. There's a lot OF you boys, for
instance, that like to have little gar
dens in your back yards. You reckon
that slick haired walkingcane would
ever send you any seeds? You send
me TO Congress and I'll show all the
gilt-edge calling cards and crooked
goldfish that this is a poor mans
country! You send me to Congress
and III show the bulls that you boys
got a right to shoot craps on the
courthouse steps right on Sunday
morning if You feel like it, You send
me to Congress and you and me to-
sether will put hot crimp in this
Governments handing all that dough
to Wall Street. You send me to Con-
gress and I'll see that what they
got left goes to the people that ought
to have it! Boys, I'll begin with the
seeds. You send me to Congress, and
I'll see that every man in this audi
ence that wants seeds gets a barrel
of 'em.''
That was Milt Letting in his first
OF course. as he knew perfectly we'll
George Brooks never called himself
&c. Thomas Brooks" in his life, but
what seemed most ridiculous about
the speech was Milt's offering seeds
to that bunch Of city riffraff The
newspapers called him the barrel-of-
seeds candidate and ! did hope the
name would stick to him. but I guess
now I was wrong to hope so, because
I've come to believe it might do him
more good than harm. 1t did him
more good than harm even then, SO
far as the people he made that speech
to were concerned, because it's an
actual fact that the "old twelfth
ward" has been solid for him from
that day to this. They liked his
promising them a barrel, you see,
whether they could use it or not.