Vol. 107

No. 5

"L

IKE the singed cat, he is better than he looks," wrote Richard W. Irwin of Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1907, of the newly elected member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, Calvin Coolidge. Mr. Irwin was a former state senator and he was introducing the new legislator from his home town to the speaker of the lower house. Of his appearance at that time Martin Lomasney, the Democratic politician said, "I took him for a country schoolteacher or an undertaker," both of whom among the ordinary run of good mixers who usually get sent to the legislature have more or less of the singed-cat air about them. They are not accepted instantly as of the confraternity. Mr. Irwin, wise in the ways of the state capitol, knew that Mr. Coolidge would not be.

Some time in almost every one's life the whole truth about one is summed up with a flash of insight in a single sentence. Fortunately, this letter of Mr. Irwin's is preserved, for I do not think that a whole book will ever tell more about the external and internal characteristics of the President than was put in those ten words,

"Like the singed cat, he is better than he looks."

And Mr. Irwin went deeper than he knew. I should say that Mr. Coolidge's whole life had been concentrated on "being better than he looked." It is a terrible thing, that singed-cat sense, which many of us have. It drives one man to drink and another to the Presidency. It urges one man to everlasting chattering and the false show of exuberant spirits, so that the world will somehow lose sight of the poor denuded pussy that is inside; and it holds another man's tongue in subjection, so that no word will escape which will suggest pussy's presence. It makes men silly and it makes men serious. It makes men arrogant and it makes men humble— on the surface. In one statement of Mr. Coolidge's, that declining to be a candidate for President in 1920, I find these two sentences, "It is always well for one to walk humbly," and "I have a great desire to walk humbly," twice in fewer than three hundred words, the singed-cat sense expressing itself. And another speech begins: "Man's nature drives him ever onward. He is forever seeking develop

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ment," the singed-cat sense making up for deficiencies. And here is a quotation from another speech:

"We build the ladder by which we rise,

And we mount to the summit

round by round."

The singed-cat sense and the bitter driving force of ambition, which converts everything to use, which concentrates attention on self, which makes every little word so important that it is weighed and counted, which shackles the free spirit and makes one the slave of one's own progress this explains Mr. Coolidge.

President Wilson had the singed-cat sense and became arrogant to forget it. Mr. Coolidge had it, and, a better puritan, kept it always by him, "walked humbly," to remind him to work hard, to waste no time in play or on the lighter by-paths of friendship, to overcome his disability rather than to forget it by seeming different to himself from what he was.

I never knew a man to make better use of his apparent disabilities than Mr. Coolidge has. A friend of mine used to say: "Whatever you do, don't over-advertise. If I should write a funny book or play, and my publisher or producer should advertise it as the funniest book or play that ever came off a type-writer, people would look at it and say, 'But this is not funny at all.' Over-expectation would be aroused. You know how everybody is disappointed at the first view of Niagara Falls. But if you let them find out that the book or play is funny, they enjoy all the pleasure of discovery and of telling about it. They are little Columbuses of a new world."

This advice always seemed to me

impractical, for you can't get publishers and producers to "walk humbly" in their advertisements. But Mr. Coolidge had the advantage of being his own publisher and producer. He did walk humbly as Vice-President. He was the most complete singed-cat Vice-President Washington has ever seen. Of course people always do look down on Vice-Presidents. They are as pathetic as mothers-in-law and as good a joke. They either have to join in the general laugh at their own expense, like Marshall, and are not to be trusted in the White House because of their sense of humor, or they become "woolly horses," like Fairbanks, from whose dull stodginess the kind Providence which watches over all things American saves the nation.

Coolidge could not laugh at himself, like Marshall. That self had cost too much effort to be a joke. A fellow who is born, not made, may be a joke. Nor was he prominent enough to be a woolly horse, like Fairbanks. People laughed at him, as at all Vice-Presidents, but a little less kindly. His loneliness, his inability to unbend and take life lightly, his mirthlessness, his silence, were the subject of jests. Stories were told about him of which this familiar one is the stock example. A lady rushed up to another at a reception. "I see," she exclaimed, "that you have just made the VicePresident laugh. Please tell me what you said to him. I'll remember it and say it to him again next year and make him laugh again." He never told stories himself. That singed-cat sense which causes some men to tell endless stories, and thus get themselves accepted, made him unwilling to waste effort on such trifles.

There was a little malice in this

attitude toward the Vice-President. He had been over-advertised in connection with the Boston police strike. That exploit of his had been somewhat discounted. People were a little ashamed of their hysteria over his "saving of the nation from the forces of unrest." So all in all, you see, when he became President he was more fortunate than most Presidents are. The possibilities of disillusionment were nil. The possibilities of discovery were boundless. He was certain to be "better than he looked." Since then, up to the moment when he sent his message to Congress, shortly after which these words are being written, the country has been discovering Mr. Coolidge. It feels,

"Like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes,"

etc. It will probably stand

"Silent, upon a peak in Darien"

all the remaining months of 1924, which, I should say, was pretty good capitalization of the singed cat.

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The astonishing vista that fills the eye of the bold explorer of the new national figure is that often dreamed of thing, a new alinement of parties, that new world in which all the conservatives will be in one place and all the radicals in another, where men will divide upon principles, where there will be issues and not mere names to fight over, where there will be realities and not mere shadows. And, amazingly enough, the challenge has come not from a radical, but from a conservative.

What struck the country with force when it read the annual message was

that at last there was a man in the White House who had taken sides, who was not, "on the one hand," for the conservatives of the East and, "on the other," for the progressives of the West. All the time that he was President, Mr. Harding had tried only to hold his party together. He had sought to give to the progressives the minimum that would satisfy them without alienating the conservatives, and the conservatives their minimum requirement provided it did not enrage the progressives. It was a government of minimums. The result was that both factions felt cheated. The President was discredited as a futile compromiser. Mr. Coolidge says somewhere that you can't get good government on a bargain counter. He says it in a sense different from the one in which I now use it. But Mr. Harding kept a bargain counter, and no one was pleased with the bargains. The West went to Magnus Johnson, and the East was mumbling with disaffection and wishing for some other candidate in 1924. Mr. Coolidge had the wit to set up a quality one-price store. It was a novelty; it surprized and delighted the country. Instead of trying to hold his party together, he took the position of the majority of his party and said, "This is where the party stands."

I say he had the "wit" to do this, but I say so with reservations; for no one will ever be able to decide how much it was calculation or how much it was conviction which led him to pronounce flatly for tax revision, to reject the bonus, and not to yield to the temptation to lure the farmer with the bait of federal aid. No one is in the secret of Mr. Coolidge's motives. He has no confidants. His message