olitics there, you know. But, even
so--I have played chess against its president with a set carved
from the nasal bones of the tapir--one of our native specimens
of the order of _perissodactyle ungulates_ inhabiting the
Cordilleras--which was as pretty ivory as you would care to see.

"But is was of romance and adventure and the ways of women that was
I going to tell you, and not of zoological animals.

"For fifteen years I was the ruling power behind old Sancho
Benavides, the Royal High Thumbscrew of the republic. You've seen
his picture in the papers--a mushy black man with whiskers like the
notes on a Swiss music-box cylinder, and a scroll in his right hand
like the ones they write births on in the family Bible. Well, that
chocolate potentate used to be the biggest item of interest anywhere
between the colour line and the parallels of latitude. It was three
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. Beau