throws, horses, whether he was to wind up in the Hall of Fame or the
Bureau of Combustibles. He'd have been sure called the Roosevelt of
the Southern Continent if it hadn't been that Grover Cleveland was
President at the time. He'd hold office a couple of terms, then he'd
sit out for a hand--always after appointing his own successor for
the interims.

"But it was not Benavides, the Liberator, who was making all this
fame for himself. Not him. It was Judson Tate. Benavides was only
the chip over the bug. I gave him the tip when to declare war and
increase import duties and wear his state trousers. But that wasn't
what I wanted to tell you. How did I get to be It? I'll tell you.
Because I'm the most gifted talker that ever made vocal sounds since
Adam first opened his eyes, pushed aside the smelling-salts, and
asked: 'Where am I?'

"As you observe, I am about the ugliest man you ever saw outside
the gallery of photographs of the New England early Christian
Scientists. So, at an early age, I perceived that what I lacked
in looks I must make up in eloquence. That I've done. I get what I
go after. As the back-stop and still small voice of old Benavides
I made all the great historical powers-behind-the-throne, such
as Talleyrand, Mrs. de Pompadour, and Loeb, look as small as the
minority report of a Duma. I could talk nations into or out of debt,
harangue armies to sleep on the battlefield, reduce insurrections,
inflammations, taxes, appropriations or surpluses with a few words,
and call up the dogs of war or the dove of peace with the same
bird-like whistle. Beauty and epaulettes and curly moustaches and
Grecian profiles in other men were never in my way. When people
first look at me they shudder. Unless they are in the last stages