THE STORY OF AN ENTOMOLOGIST 



now November, the cotton has all been picked and the weevils 

 have gone into hibernation." 



"Well," said the President, "isn't there something that you can 

 do about it? The man is a friend of mine, and he is a fine 

 fellow." 



"Is he there with you, sir.?" 



He replied that he was, and I asked him to send the man over 

 to see me at the Club. 



The man, a very pleasant fellow, came over and we had a talk. 

 I told him politely that if he would send his compound to our 

 laboratory at Tallulah, Louisiana, it would be tested the follow- 

 ing summer. It seemed to me that this was obviously a case — and 

 we encountered many of them in our work — in which, after the 

 growing season, secret compounds were rushed on the market 

 and were sold by the carloads before the coming season should 

 give a chance for a test. And so it turned out. The remedy was 

 a practical failure, and I believe that the man who called on me 

 got into financial difficulties and committed suicide the next year. 



But wasn't it an excellent example of President Harding's 

 small-town friendliness? It was the only time in fifty-four years 

 of government service that a President of the United States 

 called me personally on the telephone. 



There is one final anecdote that I must tell, since it throws an 

 interesting sidelight. The Secretary of Agriculture during the 

 Harding administration was Henry C. Wallace of Iowa. The 

 bureau chiefs of the Department arranged a luncheon in his 

 honor on his birthday. It was held in one of the big private 

 dining-rooms at the Cosmos Club. Thirty or forty of us gathered 

 at the appointed hour, and were standing at our places when 

 the Secretary, a little late, arrived. I was to preside at the lunch- 

 eon, and was standing at the end of the table next to the late 

 Professor Whitney. The Secretary came to his place between 



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