But sometimes I break my own rules—for the sake of variety, perhaps—and I did it not long ago when a certain college in Georgia took as a subject for debate the proposition: “_Resolved_, That the South should have supported Watson in the last Presidential election.” Of course, there were but two names to be considered in the discussion—Watson and Parker. Teddy wasn’t in it at all. And that is a queer thing, too, for about one-third of the white people of Georgia believe just as Teddy does about the money question, the Tariff system, the Panama business, the Philippine policy, the big navy project, the Railroad rate reduction, and so forth and so on. But they wouldn’t vote for Teddy to save his life. And why? They have a distinct presentiment that if they should vote for a man like Roosevelt they would never dare to go to sleep again lest they wake up next morning and find niggers sitting at the breakfast-table on the level of social equality. Consequently, Roosevelt didn’t cut any ice in the schoolhouse debate. Parker and I—we had it all to ourselves. Good-natured people will not begrudge this honor to Parker and me, I am sure, for we are clearly entitled to something, and Teddy has just about carried off everything else. He can afford to be generous, and to let two of his late competitors wear the laurels in a college debate away down in Georgia. Whether Parker coached the boys on his side I am not informed. If he didn’t, they must have had a tough job getting up “points.” It is a task at which the average boy would need prompt and patient assistance. Perhaps, W. J. B. was appealed to. At all events, he should have been. The Nebraska Talk-Factory turns out quite a variety of finished product, and the kind of garment it wove for the adornment of Parker, late in the last campaign, was a marvel in its way—especially when one considers how suddenly the machinery had to be readjusted to fill that particular order. As to myself, I frankly confess that I “suspended the rules” and gave my champion some “points.” This was wrong, but human. Had I known that the judges presiding over the debate were two Democrats and a Republican, I would have furnished points to the Parker side, also. Then my champions would have come out ahead. My private opinion is that I could have coached the Parker champions in such a way that even a pied-piper tribunal, composed of two Georgia Democrats and a New York Republican, would have had to call in a fourth man to know how to decide. Provided, _always_, that W. J. B. had stayed out of it. Of course, when _he_ butts in, nobody can say what may happen. Well, the boys debated, the judges decided, and Parker won out. The remainder of the story is related by the ingenuous youth who fought for me in that contest, and I am going to give you his letter just as he wrote it. THE LETTER MANASSAS, GA., March 13, 1905.