es elected their candidate.

Marthy and Will sat with Eric in the carriage at the second inaugural,
too. There was an argument again about who should ride backward. Rudd
said:

"Eric, your Excellency, these here crowds came to see you, and you ought
to face 'em. As your dad I order you to set there 'side of your mother."

But Eric said, "Dad, your Majesty, the people have seen me often enough,
and as the President of these here United States I order you to set
there 'side of your wife."

And of course Rudd had to do it. Folks looked very much surprised to see
him and there was quite a piece in the papers about it.

To every man his day's work and his night's dream. Will Rudd has poor
nourishment of the former, but he is richly fed of the latter. His
failures and his poverty and the monotony of his existence are public
knowledge; his dream is his own triumph and the greater for being his
secret.

The Fates seemed to go out of their way to be cruel to Will Rudd, but he
beat them at their own game. Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos kept Jupiter
himself in awe of their shears, and the old Norns, Urdur, Verdandi, and
Skuld, ruined Wotan's power and his glory. But they could not touch the
shoe clerk. They shattered his little scheme of things to bits, but he
rebuilt it nearer to his heart's desire. He spread a sky about his
private planet and ruled his little universe like a tribal god. He,
alone of all men, had won the oldest, vainest prayer that was ever said
or sung: "O God, keep the woman I love young and beautiful, and grant
our child happiness and success without sin or sorrow."

If, sometimes, the imagination of the matter-of-fact man wavers, and the
ugliness of his loneliness overwhelms him, thrusts through his dream
like a hideous mountainside when an avalanche strips the barren crags of
their fleece; and if he then breaks down and calls aloud for his child
and his wife to be given back to him from Out There--these panics are
also his secret. Only the homely sitting-room of the lonely frame house
knows them. He opens the door of the wood-stove or follows his pipe
smoke and rallies his courage, resumes his dream. The next morning sees
him emerge from his door and go briskly to the shop as always, whether
his path is through rain or sleet, or past the recurrent lilacs that
have scattered many a purple snow across his sidewalk since the
bankruptcy of his ambitions.

He would have been proud to be the unknown father