always we come back to the knowledge that we
are nationally like Harding, who is typical of what we are. "Just
folks" Kuppenheimered, movieized, associated pressed folks.

Men debate whether or not Mr. Wilson was a great man and they will
keep on doing so until the last of those passes away whose judgment
of him is clouded by the sense of his personality. But men will
never debate about the greatness of Mr. Harding, not even Mr.
Harding himself. He is modest. He has only two vanities, his vanity
about his personal appearance and his vanity about his literary
style.

The inhibitions of a presidential candidate, bound to speak and say
nothing, irked him.

"Of course I could make better speeches than these" he told a
friend during the campaign, "but I have to be so careful."

In his inaugural address he let himself go, as much as it is
possible for a man so cautious as he is to let himself go. It was a
great speech, an inaugural to place alongside the inaugurals of
Lincoln and Washington, written in his most capable English,
Harding at his best. It is hard for a man to move Marion for years
with big editorials, to receive the daily compliments of Dick
Cressinger and Jim Prendergast, without becoming vain of the power
of his pen. It is his chief vanity and it is one that it is hard
for him who speaks or writes to escape. He has none of that egotism
which makes a self-confident man think himself the favorite of
fortune.

He said after his nomination at Chicago, "We drew to a pair of
deuces and filled." He did not say it boastfully as a man who likes
to draw to a pair of deuces and who always expects to fill. He said
it with surprise and relief. He does not like to hold a pair of
deuces and be forced to draw to them. He has not a large way of
regarding losing and winning as all a part of the game. He hates to
lose. He hated to lose even a friendly game of billiards in the
Marion Club with his old friend Colonel Christian, father of his
secretary, though the stake was only a cigar.

When he was urged to seek the Republican nomination for the
Presidency he is reported to have said, "Why should I. My chances
of winning are not good. If I let you use my name I shall probably
in the end lose the nomination for the Senate. (His term was
expiring.) If I don't run for the Presidency I can stay in the
Senate all my life. I like the Senate. It is a very pleasant
place."

The Senate is like Marion, Ohio, a very pleasant plac