But you always have to say
something, and that is what frightens me.
I remember out in Sydney once having to respond to some complimentary
toast, and my one desire was to turn in my tracks like any other worm
--and run, for it. I was remembering that occasion at a later date when
I had to introduce a speaker. Hoping, then, to spur his speech by
putting him, in joke, on the defensive, I accused him in my introduction
of everything I thought it impossible for him to have committed. When I
finished there was an awful calm. I had been telling his life history by
mistake.
One must keep up one's character. Earn a character first if you can, and
if you can't, then assume one. From the code of morals I have been
following and revising and revising for seventy-two years I remember one
detail. All my life I have been honest--comparatively honest. I could
never use money I had not made honestly--I could only lend it.
Last spring I met General Miles again, and he commented on the fact that
we had known each other thirty years. He said it was strange that we had
not met years before, when we had both been in Washington.
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