"Excuse me a moment," returned Mr.Blaine, and when he came back to the room, he said: "Now let's talk over this interesting proposition that the President has told me about."The two discussed the matter and completed arrangements whereby Mr.
Blaine was to undertake the work.Toward the latter end of the talk, Bok had covertly--as he thought--looked at his watch to keep track of his train.
"It's all right about that train," came from Mr.Blaine, with his back toward Bok, writing some data of the talk at his desk."You'll make it all right."Bok wondered how he should, as it then lacked only seventeen minutes of four.But as Mr.Blaine reached the front door, he said to the editor:
"My carriage is waiting at the curb to take you to the station, and the coachman has your seat in the parlor car."And with this knightly courtesy, Mr.Blaine shook hands with Bok, who was never again to see him, nor was the contract ever to be fulfilled.
For early in 1893 Mr.Blaine passed away without having begun the work.
Again Bok turned to the President, and explained to him that, for some reason or other, the way seemed to point to him to write the articles himself.By that time President Harrison had decided that he would not succeed himself.Accordingly he entered into an agreement with the editor to begin to write the articles immediately upon his retirement from office.And the day after Inauguration Day every newspaper contained an Associated Press despatch announcing the former President's contract with The Ladies' Home Journal.
Shortly afterward, Benjamin Harrison's articles on "This Country of Ours" successfully appeared in the magazine.
During Bok's negotiations with President Harrison in connection with his series of articles, he was called to the White House for a conference.
It was midsummer.Mrs.Harrison was away at the seashore, and the President was taking advantage of her absence by working far into the night.
The President, his secretary, and Bok sat down to dinner.
The Marine Band was giving its weekly concert on the green, and after dinner the President suggested that Bok and he adjourn to the "back lot"and enjoy the music.
"You have a coat?" asked the President.
"No, thank you," Bok answered."I don't need one.""Not in other places, perhaps," he said, "but here you do.The dampness comes up from the Potomac at nightfall, and it's just as well to be careful.It's Mrs.Harrison's dictum," he added smiling."Halford, send up for one of my light coats, will you, please?"Bok remarked, as he put on the President's coat, that this was probably about as near as he should ever get to the presidency.
"Well, it's a question whether you want to get nearer to it," answered the President.He looked very white and tired in the moonlight.
"Still," Bok said with a smile, "some folks seem to like it well enough to wish to get it a second time.""True," he answered, "but that's what pride will do for a man.Try one of these cigars."A cigar! Bok had been taking his tobacco in smaller doses with paper around them.He had never smoked a cigar.Still, one cannot very well refuse a presidential cigar!
"Thank you," Bok said as he took one from the President's case.He looked at the cigar and remembered all he had read of Benjamin Harrison's black cigars.This one was black--inky black--and big.
"Allow me," he heard the President suddenly say, as he handed him a blazing match.There was no escape.The aroma was delicious, but--Two or three whiffs of that cigar, and Bok decided the best thing to do was to let it go out.He did.
"I have allowed you to talk so much," said the President after a while, "that you haven't had a chance to smoke.Allow me," and another match crackled into flame.
"Thank you," the editor said, as once more he lighted the cigar, and the fumes went clear up into the farthest corner of his brain.
"Take a fresh cigar," said the President after a while."That doesn't seem to burn well.You will get one like that once in a while, although I am careful about my cigars.""No, thanks, Mr.President," Bok said hurriedly."It's I, not the cigar.""Well, prove it to me with another," was the quick rejoinder, as he held out his case, and in another minute a match again crackled."There is only one thing worse than a bad smoke, and that is an office-seeker,"chuckled the President.
Bok couldn't prove that the cigars were bad, naturally.So smoke that cigar he did, to the bitter end, and it was bitter! In fifteen minutes his head and stomach were each whirling around, and no more welcome words had Bok ever heard than when the President said: "Well, suppose we go in.Halford and I have a day's work ahead of us yet."The President went to work.
Bok went to bed.He could not get there quick enough, and he didn't--that is, not before he had experienced that same sensation of which Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote: he never could understand, he said, why young authors found so much trouble in getting into the magazines, for his first trip to Europe was not a day old before, without even the slightest desire or wish on his part, he became a contributor to the Atlantic!
The next day, and for days after, Bok smelled, tasted, and felt that presidential cigar!
A few weeks afterward, Bok was talking after dinner with the President at a hotel in New York, when once more the cigar-case came out and was handed to Bok.
"No, thank you, Mr.President," was the instant reply, as visions of his night in the White House came back to him."I am like the man from the West who was willing to try anything once."And he told the President the story of the White House cigar.
The editor decided to follow General Harrison's discussion of American affairs by giving his readers a glimpse of foreign politics, and he fixed upon Mr.Gladstone as the one figure abroad to write for him.He sailed for England, visited Hawarden Castle, and proposed to Mr.
Gladstone that he should write a series of twelve autobiographical articles which later could be expanded into a book.
