FullReads

“Instructor in a small Ohio college. Economics and history. I’m writing a monograph on our diplomacy, and naturally—There are so many things that only you could explain!”

“Because I’m so old?”

“No! Because you’ve had so much knowledge and courage—perhaps they’re the same thing! Every day, literally, in working on my book I’ve wished I could consult you. For instance—Tell me, sir, didn’t Secretary of State Olney really want war with England over Venezuela? Wasn’t he trying to be a tin hero?”

“No!” The old man threw off his shawl. It was somehow a little shocking to find him not in an ancient robe laced with gold, but in a crisp linen summer suit with a smart bow tie. He sat up, alert, his voice harsher. “No! He was a patriot. Sturdy. Honest. Willing to be conciliatory but not flinching. Miss Tully!”

At the Senator’s cry, out of the wide fanlighted door of the house slid a trained nurse. Her uniform was so starched that it almost clattered, but she was a peony sort of young woman, the sort who would insist on brightly mothering any male, of any age, whether or not he desired to be mothered. She glared at the intruding Selig; she shook her finger at Senator Ryder, and simpered:

“Now I do hope you aren’t tiring yourself, else I shall have to be ever so stern and make you go to bed. The doctor said—”

“Damn the doctor! Tell Mrs. Tinkham to bring me down the file of letters from Richard Olney, Washington, for 1895—O-l-n-e-y—and hustle it!”

Miss Tully gone, the Senator growled, “Got no more use for a nurse than a cat for two tails! It’s that mutton-headed doctor, the old fool! He’s seventy-five years old, and he hasn’t had a thought since 1888. Doctors!”

He delivered an address on the art of medicine with such vigorous blasphemy that Selig shrank in horrified admiration. And the Senator didn’t abate the blazing crimson of his oration at the entrance of his secretary, Mrs. Tinkham, a small, narrow, bleached, virginal widow.

Selig expected her to leap off the porch and commit suicide in terror. She didn’t. She waited, she yawned gently, she handed the Senator a manila envelope, and gently she vanished.

The Senator grinned. “She’ll pray at me tonight! She daren’t while you’re here. There! I feel better. Good cussing is a therapeutic agent that has been forgotten in these degenerate days. I could teach you more about cussing than about diplomacy—to which cussing is a most valuable aid. Now here is a letter that Secretary Olney wrote me about the significance of his correspondence with England. ”

It was a page of history. Selig handled it with more reverence than he had given to any material object in his life.

He exclaimed, “Oh, yes, you used—of course I’ve never seen the rest of this letter, and I can’t tell you, sir, how excited I am to see it. But didn’t you use this first paragraph—it must be about on page 276 of your Anglo–American Empire?”

“I believe I did. It’s not my favorite reading!”

“You know, of course, that it was reprinted from your book in the Journal of the American Society of Historical Sources last year?”

“Was it?” The old man seemed vastly pleased. He beamed at Selig as at a young but tested friend. He chuckled, “Well, I suppose I appreciate now how King Tut felt when they remembered him and dug him up…. Miss Tully! Hey! Miss Tully, will you be so good as to tell Martens to bring us whisky and soda, with two glasses? Eh? Now you look here, young woman; we’ll fight out the whole question of my senile viciousness after our guest has gone. Two glasses, I said! … Now about Secretary Olney. The fact of the case was … ”