LETTER VIII
IN WHICH I PEEK INTO A PALACE
Dear Mom:
If you have got the same habit that I have got of reading everything in the papers that the Spokesman says you will of saw how many times He says the things I have said for Him to say. The last time was that about the government having the right to protect itself against fellers that wants to talk about over-throwing it. It come out in the papers just like I said it to Mr. Edgerton.
Yesterday there wasnt so much news only a story about how the Spokesman had been delayed for a full minute after He had got into His automobile by the Spokeslady having to coax Her dog to get in too. It made a sweet story for I like to think of Them having a pet that They love.
Today there is another story very interesting. It seems that the Spokesman has got to have exercise but He is too busy to go and get it so up there in the great white house where He stays they have set up an electric camelephant, that works by machinery and every morning He gets up on top of it and gives Him a nice ride and shakes Him up and starts everything inside Him. I think that is a wonderful idea but I should think it would be rather tiresome riding on a camelephant and not getting nowhere or any change of scenery like on a real camelephant. But I suppose the Spokesman would be too busy to look at the scenery anyhow, He has got to be thinking all the time about what He is going to say to the reporters when they come to listen to Him again.
There was a customer left a magazine in the Elite Beauty Parlors and in it I see a picture of the Spokesman. Of course it is not a picture of Him riding the camelephant but it just shows His face. But I cut it out and took it home and pasted it on a piece of cardboard and I have set it up on my bureau so that I can look at Him while I amthinking up things that I can tell Mr. Edgerton to tell Him to say to the reporters. I wish that Mr. Edgerton had not told me one thing about Him that I find myself always thinking while I look at the picture that He is like a singed cat because He is better than He looks. Of course I know there is movie actors that is more sheiks but they have not got the great ideas of the Spokesman.
P. S. Well I have went to dinner with Mr. Edgerton again and it had to be a cheap place because of that scare that we got from seeing a man that we thought was following us. Mr. Edgerton says that he does not know any more about it because the man did not follow him on the street car. It might be that his wife is having him shadowed because she is jealous about him giving so much time to trying to understand the plain people. He says that she is now certain that a wart which she has got on her shoulder is turning into angina pectoris and when he tries to persuade her that it is not so she cries and becomes very excited and says that he no longer loves her and that she knows he is only waiting for her to die so that he can run off with some peroxide blonde. I asks him if that means me and he says that my guess about it is better than any man’s.
The other thing that it might be he says some of his enemies might be having him watched so as to get something on him. I says, “Have you got enemies?” And he says, “Up there at the great white house I have not got anything else and neither has anybody else because everyone is hating everyone else and watching for a chance to lift his scalp off.”
There is a dozen secretaries up there it seems but Mr. Edgerton is the special one indeed he is really not a secretary at all he is just that on the payroll but they dont pay him very much and the greater part of his pay comes to him on the side out of funds which is put up by business men that want to have the say about things. And what Mr. Edgerton is paid for is to be a kind of guardian to the Spokesman to tell Him what to say that He wouldn’t know if He wasnt told. And of course Mr. Edgerton has got the right to come into the big white house at all hours of the day or night and it is not many that have got that right and them that have not got it are intreeging and trying to pull down they that have.
He said again that it is just like a palace with a king and his courtiers but as I was never in a palace I couldnot tell. And he told me about the people he has to deal with up there in the big white house and of course I listened very eager not because I like to gossip but because I have got to understand about these people if I am going to be one that has got the job of teaching the Spokesman.
Mr. Edgerton says there is an old gentleman by the name of Mr. Prows that is a sort of grandaddy to the great Man. He owns a big department store back in the home town and it runs itself and all the old gentleman has got to do is to play around in the big white house and enjoy the thrills of power. People come to him that wants this and that and he listens and looks wise and says that he will see what can be done and he toddles round and ask questions of this and that and by and by he whispers into the Spokesman’s ear that the welfare of the party depends upon Pete Whizzle being made deputy collector of customs at Skunk Center Montana and if the Spokesman does it then the old gentleman is proud and happy for a week.
And there is another guy that is a big mill-owner by the name of Senator Buttles and he has been the Spokesman’s real boss and now is the political manager and he is supposed to run the machine and all the other politicians and the other senators. But he is a flop at the job because you see he is one of these hard-boiled guys that is used to running a factory and to say for things to be done just so and if you dont like it you can get the hell out of here. But the other senators aint used to the job being done that way they is mostly old guys of the sporting sort that buy their bootleg liquor right in the lobby and they dont like the Spokesman and His blue-nose cheese-paring crowd that He has brought along from the artic regions and there is war between them and Mr. Edgerton has to work hard to keep it from busting into the papers some day.
And Mr. Edgerton says the Spokesman is very worried about that story about the camelephant. He thinks maybe the people will think it is not dignified for the greatest Man in the world to be riding on a camelephant in His pajamas in His bedroom. And I says, “Well I should of thought that is just where they would think He should ride,” I says. “The undignified part would be if He was to ride a camelephant on the street in His pajamas.” And Mr. Edgerton says that is quite true and I always think of things in just the right way and if I am sure that the plain people will see it that way the Spokesman will be less unhappy.
Mr. Edgerton says there is nothing in the whole world thatworries the Spokesman so much as being made fun of because He is very serious about His job and wants people to be serious about Him. And I says, “Of course He would have to be,” I says, “for it is no joke to know that a hundred millions of people is waiting for you to teach them what to think and a Man that has got to talk to all the reporters of all the newspapers of the whole world has got a job that will keep Him looking serious.”
“Well that is just what it does,” says Mr. Edgerton and he says, “You feel quite sure that it wont hurt Him about the camelephant?”
I says, “Anybody that laughs about such a thing will be no good American,” I says. “The plain people like I know back in the gas-house district of Camden New Jersey,” I says, “will think that a Man that has to teach them and govern them and manage their international affairs should be a sober Man and a moral Man with no time for foolishness,” I says. “I dont suppose He rides that camelephant for fun,” I says.
And Mr. Edgerton says, “No it is for His liver.”
And I says, “Exactly He has got to take care of His liver of course,” I says. “And while He rides He will have His mind on the government and He will not let Himself be worried by no laughing jackasses along the roadside.”
Mr. Edgerton says that when the Spokesman saw the story in print He was fearful peeved and could not talk about nothing else all day He demanded to know who had give that camelephant away to the reporters and He told Mr. Edgerton to go and find out. And Mr. Edgerton went first to Mr. Grandaddy Prows and the old gentleman said he was not at liberty to say but in strict confidence he had an idea that it was Senator Buttles that had give it out. And then Mr. Edgerton went to Senator Buttles and asked him who had give it out and Senator Buttles said that he was not at liberty to say but in strict confidence he had an idea that it was Mr. Prows that had give it out. And gee Mom would you think that a palace would be so much like the Elite Beauty Parlors?
Well Mom I could of listened all day to international affairs like this but I had got nervous about all this intreeging and I looks about and there at one of the tables is sitting the same feller that I seen at the table the other night trying to listen in on our talk. “Mr. Edgerton,” I says, “we are being shadowed again.” And after that he was souneasy that his mind was not on what I was saying. And he says, “When we go out you must let me put you into a taxi because it will not be so easy for him to follow you and I will go another way and lose him in the crowd,” he says.
So he gives me money for the fare and we goes out and he puts me into a cab and away I go and pretty soon I look back and there is the lights of another car behind us and so I watches and that car follows us all the time so I tell my driver not to take me no farther but to let me out and I will save most of my fare. And when I get out I see that the other car stops too and waits to see where I am going and then it follows slow.
I says to myself, “I will block that little game,” so I slips into a big hotel right quick. I can do that all right because I have got on my swell new clothes that Mr. Edgerton give me so I look like I belonged in one of them places. I goes into an elevator and slips off at the mezzanine floor and sits there a while in one of the soft plush seats and a gentleman comes along and spreads his feathers in front of me—you know they calls them places “Peacock Alley”—but I goes on staring straight in front of me and he sees that I am not his pea-hen and so he goes away. This is not the man that is following Mr. Edgerton and I you understand but just some feller that is intreeged by my swell new clothes.
I dont see any more of the one that was following us so I go out by another entrance and get home all right. But gee Mom we are really being spied on and I wonder how it is they can find us whether they have got the telephone wires tapped at the Elite Beauty Parlors or whether they have got one of the girls hired to tip them off to my dates. You never can tell when you are living in the great world and have the job of deciding what is to be taught to the whole American people. Gee Mom it is more thrilling than any movie that I ever was at!
Your excited
Mame.