He would grow tired and slip into his more negligent mood. “Did I ever tell you about the time the old man put up Leslie Robinson for Governor? He put out, I reckon, five thousand dollars to nominate Les Robinson. It’s a pity the old man ever turned his talent to politics, even for so short a time as it took to roll Les Robinson up into a spit-ball and throw him up on the roof of the convention hall. It’s all in the count. But Father believed in Les Robinson’s genius, wanted to see him win, and he had some notion to get something for himself out of it, I reckon. It’s no use now to waste breath on old measures. All the west counties got in line, and then somebody got all the mountains in a handful. It was a frame-up on Les. The owls of iniquity will howl. No use to go into it now. Money melts in politics like sugar in hot water. Nobody knows where’t goes. The most hearty desire to render succor, service, unselfish devotion to the common cause of myself and my country. I promise, if elected, to emulate the great heroes of our great commonwealth in word and act, to uphold the constitutions of the state and of the nation, to honor the law and the right, and to protect the home as the sanctuary of mankind.” He was personally reminiscent now, his feet on a high hassock. “You remember, don’t you, Theodosia, the time I ran for the state senate?... It’s queer how it is, but your own brat that you begot yourself grows up and looks you full in the face and asks you with a sharp shoulder-blade, ‘What made you ever do that durned fool thing for?’ I’ve known you, Theodosia, ever since you were no bigger than my two hands, and earlier. Ronnie Robinson says, ‘Le’s make this one a toast,’ and then Mike O’Connor says, ‘We’ll drink to the health of the unborn.’ The time I acted Santy Claus in the church. I never told in your hearen about that, did I, Dosia? “Folks there in the church thought here’s a good time to get Horace interested in church work, I reckon. Charlotte played the organ there part of the time. I recollect they asked me to act Santy Claus. ‘Who ever saw a Santy Claus six foot and over?’ I says, but they’d got their heads set to’t. Mike O’Connor says, ‘God’s sake, Horace!’ when he heard I was to be the Santy Claus. Christmas Eve at night, it was to be. Rosie Granger made the costume for me to wear, a red coat, boots with fur sewed on the top. A white beard all over my mouth. ‘I drink to the health of the unborn,’ Mike O’Connor says.”