U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [144]
brave they'd al been wounded and they were very glad that they were stewards and not in the trenches
and the pastry was magnificent
at last it was the zone and a zigzag course we sat
-363-quiet in the bar and then it was the mouth of the Gironde and a French torpedoboat circling round the ship in the early pearl soft morning and the steamers fol owing the little patrolboat on account of the minefields the sun was rising red over the ruddy winegrowing land and the Gironde was ful of freighters and airplanes in the sun and battleships
the Garonne was red it was autumn there were
barrels of new wine and shel cases along the quays in front of the grayfaced houses and the masts of stocky sailboats packed in against the great red iron bridge at the Hotel of the Seven Sisters everybody was in
mourning but business was brisk on account of the war and every minute they expected the government to come down from Paris
up north they were dying in the mud and the trenches but business was good in Bordeaux and the winegrowers and the shipping agents and the munitionsmakers crowded into the Chapon Fin and ate ortolans and mushrooms and truffles and there was a big sign
MEFIEZ-VOUS
les oreilles enemies vous icoutent
red wine twilight and yel owgravel ed squares edged with winebarrels and a smel of chocolate in the park gray statues and the names of streets
-364-Street of Lost Hopes, Street of the Spirit of the Laws, Street of Forgotten Footsteps and the smel of burning leaves and the grayfaced
Bourbon houses crumbling into red wine twilight
at the Hotel of the Seven Sisters after you were in bed late at night you suddenly woke up and there was a secretserviceagent going through your bag
and he frowned over your passport and peeped in
your books and said Monsieur c'est la petite visite FIGHTING BOB
La Fol ette was born in the town limits of Prim-rose; he worked on a farm in Dane County, Wis-consin, until he was nineteen. At the university of Wisconsin he worked his way
through. He wanted to be an actor, studied elocution and Robert Ingersol and Shakespeare and Burke;
(who wil ever explain the influence of Shake-speare in the last century, Marc Antony over Caesar's bier, Othel o to the Venetian Senate and Polonius,
everywhere Polonius?)
riding home in a buggy after commencement he
was Booth and Wilkes writing the Junius papers and
Daniel Webster and Ingersol defying God and the
togaed great grave and incorruptible as statues mag-nificently spouting through the capitoline centuries; he was the star debater in his class,
-365-and won an interstate debate with an oration on the character of Iago. He went to work in a law office and ran for dis-trict attorney. His schoolfriends canvassed the county riding round evenings. He bucked the machine and
won the election.
It was the revolt of the young man against the
state republican machine
and Boss Keyes the postmaster in Madison who
ran the county was so surprised he about fel out of his chair.
That gave La Fol ette a salary to marry on. He
was twentyfive years old.
Four years later he ran for congress; the univer-sity was with him again; he was the youngsters' candi-date. When he was elected he was the youngest rep-resentative in the house He was introduced round Washington by Philetus
Sawyer the Wisconsin lumber king who was used to
stacking and sel ing politicians the way he stacked and sold cordwood. He was a Republican and he'd bucked the ma-chine. Now they thought they had him. No man could stay honest in Washington.
Booth played Shakespeare in Baltimore that win-ter. Booth never would go to Washington on account of the bitter memory of his brother. Bob La Fol ette and his wife went to every performance.
In the parlor of the Plankinton Hotel in Mil-waukee during the state fair, Boss Sawyer the lumber king tried to bribe him to influence his brother-in-law
-366-who was presiding judge over the prosecution of the Republican state treasurer; Bob La Fol ette walked out of the hotel in a white
rage. From that time it was war without quarter with the Republican machine in Wisconsin until he was