were hurled in his path. His
family scandals were dug up by the double handful and splashed in his
face. Against his opponent the same methods were used. It was like a
race through a marsh; and when Kittredge reached his goal in the Senate
he was so muck-bemired, his heart had been so lacerated, the nakedness
of his past so exposed, that his laurel seemed more like a wreath of
poison ivy. And once mounted on his high post, he was an even better
target than when he was on the wing.

Against Eric's blameless life the arrows of slander were like darts shot
toward the sun. They fell back upon the archers' heads. That was a
lively night in the tobacco lagoon when the election returns came in and
State after State swung to Eric's column. Rudd made it as nearly
unanimous as he could without making it stupid. The solid South he left
unbroken; he just brought it over to Eric en bloc. For Eric, it seems,
had devised what everybody else has looked for in vain, a solution of
the negro problem to satisfy both North and South--and the negroes.
Unfortunately the details have been lost.

Marthy was there, of course; she rode in the same hack with their boy.
Some of the politicians and the ex-President wanted to get in, but Eric
said:

"My mother and father ride with me or I won't be President."

That settled 'em. Eric even wanted to ride backward, too, but Will, as
his father, insisted; and of course Eric obeyed, though he was
President. And the weather was more like June than March, no blizzards
delaying trains and distributing pneumonia.

Once the administration was begun, the newspapers differed strangely in
their treatment of Eric from their attitude toward other Chief
Magistrates, from Washington down. Realizing that Eric was an honorable
man trying to do the right thing by the people, no editor or cartoonist
dreamed of accusing him of an unworthy motive or an unwise act. As for
the tariff labyrinth, a matter of some trouble to certain Presidents
pulled in all directions at once by warring constituencies, Eric settled
that in a jiffy. And the best of it was that everybody was satisfied,
importers and exporters; East, West, and Middle; farmers, manufacturers,
lumbermen, oilmen, painters--everybody.

And when his first term was ended the Democrats and Republicans,
realizing that they had at last found a perfectly wise and honorable
ruler, nominated him by acclamation at both conventions. The result was
delightful; both parti