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Roosevelt. Mr. Taft, writing to Bok about another matter, asked why he had not called and talked it over while in Washington. Bok explained the impression that was current; whereupon came the answer, swift and definite!
There are no personæ non gratæ at the White House. I long ago learned the waste of time in maintaining such a class.
There was in circulation during Henry Ward Beecher’s lifetime a story, which is still revived every now and then, that on a hot Sunday morning in early summer, he began his sermon in Plymouth Church by declaring that “It is too damned hot to preach.” Bok wrote to the great preacher, asked him the truth of this report, and received this definite denial:
MY DEAR FRIEND:
No, I never did begin a sermon with the remark that “it is d—d hot,” etc. It is a story a hundred years old, revamped every few years to suit some new man. When I am dead and gone, it will be told to the rising generation respecting some other man, and then, as now, there will be fools who will swear that they heard it!
HENRY WARD BEECHER.
When Bok’s father passed away, he left, among his effects, a large number of Confederate bonds. Bok wrote to Jefferson Davis, asking if they had any value, and received this characteristic answer:
I regret my inability to give an opinion. The theory of the Confederate Government, like that of the United States, was to separate the sword from the purse. Therefore, the Confederate States Treasury was under the control not of |
