TWENTY-FIRST ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART V 431 



(Laughter). I found that 18 of the 20 wells were located with reference 

 to the convenience of the horse trough. (Laughter). 



My friends, some of you have heard this — that's the trouble about these 

 follows following you around — you never can make a speech that you 

 haven't heard, — I sometimes say that Henry Ford, a much-ridiculed and 

 laughed-at man, is the greatest benefactor of the human race of his gen- 

 eration. Now, laugh at that. And why? Because Henry Ford devised 

 a method of quick and cheap transportation over country roads. You 

 know, when we men folks get a little out of sorts because the hogs break 

 over into the corn field and raise thunder, we get mad and cannot get 

 them in, and it is cold and wet and slush, we just hitch up little tin 

 Henry and drive into town and pull out our knife and get a piece of white 

 pine and sit down against a country store, whack off a piece of chewing 

 tobacco, and we begin to spit, and we discuss whether there is milk in the 

 milky-way, or not, and whether the League of Nations will cure all the 

 sins of the human family, or not, and then after we do that for a half hour 

 or so, we don't care whether the hogs do eat the corn, or not, and we get 

 into a good humor. But when the old cow kicks over the bucket in the 

 morning, and Jonnny gets stubborn and lies down on the floor and howls, 

 as my boy does once in a while, and things go wrong around the house, 

 poor mother has to stand with her nose to the rack, fodder or no fodder, 

 it doesn't make a particle of difference. Her scenery is the same 365 days 

 in the year. It is the same old get-up-in-the-morning at four o'clock, put 

 on the hominy, put on the bacon, put on the children's clothes and prepare 

 iliem for school, milk the cow and feed the chickens; then put on dinner 

 and get that fixed, and then supper and get that fixed; and then next 

 morning at four o'clock it is the same old story "again, and that's the way 

 it goes. 



That is my experience about it. My wife is a red-headed girl, and not 

 so bad even for that. (Laughter). We had been married for about three 

 years, and I began to observe that things weren't going quite right, she 

 was fussing about the chickens, cut-worms were cutting down the cabbage, 

 and beetles were stinging the beans, and the old cow wasn't giving as 

 much milk as she ought to, and things generally were wrong; and then 

 I saw her abusing my old houn' dog. It wasn't much of a dog, but it 

 was mine, and that was the thing that was breaking the camel's back, 

 (Laughter), and I said to myself "There's something wrong here." I was 

 just entering politics then, a young cub of a politician, and there was an 

 eld gnarled white-oak tree about a quarter of a mile from the house, un- 

 der which was a white oak log, and there I used to go and pour forth 

 living flames of eloquence on that old tree — and it's living still. I don't 

 know how it managed to survive. (Laughter). And I went down there 

 and started to cogitate and ruminate, and it occurred to me all of a sudden 

 that if I had to look at the same pictures, even tho they were painted by 

 the master artist of all the ages, for 365 days in the year, for ten years 

 at a time, I would go as crazy as a bed-bug; and I went back to the 

 house and said "You just hitch these two children out in the back yard, 

 loan your old houn' dog to one of the neighbors, let the garden go to the 

 bow-wows, and the chickens to take care of themselves, pack the trunks, 



