"Gentlemen," he said, regarding them quizzically, "this bill reminds me of a Tuscarora story." They laughed at the familiar beginning, and the governor laughed with them. "It's about a man who ran a grist-mill on a creek fed by a certain swamp, which I guess you know about. He was easy-going, the water was often too low for grinding, and the little mill had business for six, since there wasn't a rival within thirty miles. The pioneers came prepared to camp when they brought grist, and I suppose loafed around pitching quoits and cursing the mill trust by whatever name they called a monopoly then. One day along came a cute boy astride a mule with two bags of grain. He sized up the crowd ahead of him as he carried in his grist, and decided that if he waited his turn the country would grow up without him. The miller happened to be tinkering his water-wheel, so the boy got his bags into a dark corner unobserved, and with a handful of mill dust gave his work the finishing touch of ripe old age. I dare say you think he took the man in, but he didn't. 'Bub,' said the miller, 'I used to do that trick myself.'" Shelby's old associates in log-rolling took the unmasking good-naturedly, but declined the amendment he suggested. He dismissed them with charming civility, jotted a laconic memorandum that the bill meditated a raid on public property for private gain, and with the calm of a gardener lopping a weed, withheld his signature. It were hard to say whose smart was shrewder, the spoilsmen's who mourned the backsliding of a pal, or the professional reformers' who chewed the galling fact that not one of the elect, but a practical politician, had done this creditable thing. Both joined forces to fling clods. In the greater world, however, Shelby's simple act won swift approval. In the cartoonists' fancy the wires of the puppet-show had gone awry, the dog bit the heel at which it slunk, the usurper's knuckles were rapped by the sceptre he would have seized. The press teemed with anecdotes and personal gossip of the governor. Everything he did or said became of interest: his dress, his habits of work, his Tuscarora stories, his domestic life. An admirer on Long Island who bred bulldogs sent him a white pup trained to answer to the name of "Veto." Triplets in the valley of the Susquehanna were christened "Calvin," "Ross," and "Shelby," respectively.