Hoover

“ From her parted lips came a little gasp, as once more on her ears seemed to fall the clear crack of Tom Locke’s fist smiting his foe full on the point of the jaw with such force that Hoover’s legs had given way beneath him like props of straw.
“He can pitch, and he can fight,” she whispered. “He looks clean and manly, too. I wonder what he’s really like. I suppose he must be coarse and vulgar. When father hears about that affair, he’ll be far more set against the game than ever, and he’s sure to hear, for the whole town must be talking of it now.” ”

“ The only son of a wealthy broker, Leonard Hoover at eighteen years of age had every advantage that the social position of his parents and a big allowance could give him, but he stood in Pop's school that saddest of sights,—a friendless boy. ”

“ A master organizer, with keen flair for efficient subordinates, of broad vision never muddied by details, with sound knowledge of business economics, and a gift for dramatic appeal, Hoover was ideally fitted to conduct the greatest experiment in economic organization the world had seen. Unsentimental himself, he knew how to arouse emotion—a necessary quality, since the food problem demanded heavy personal sacrifices which would touch every individual ”

“ Depressions and Democrats. And Hoover--'member Hoover?--Hoover had to go back to Leland Stanford libr'y to read a book to tell him why there's jobs for everybody in Russia. [He stops, looks at his father.'] 'Scuse me. Hoover's all wet. [To MARTIN, belligerently.'] My father's a bishop, see? Russia's hell on bishops. This is the country for bishops. You are out of luck, Martin. Your father made a mistake being a farmer. He should have been a bishop. Nice jobs, lots of money. Buys a job for his son so he can get married and have a wife and a home and a baby and not be a Red. You think I'm a Red? ”

“ After getting our camp into shape we invited Hoover to eat with us, which he seemed glad to do, but insisted on paying for his share of the grub. He seemed quite interested in our fireless cooker and camp outfit, but couldn’t understand why he had not left us behind during the day. I could have told him, but I didn’t. I noticed he did not have a brake on his wagon, so that going down hill he had to go slow, while I let our team trot down, holding the wagon with the brake. In this way I made up all I lost on the level and up grades, and didn’t worry the horses either. ”

“ A lover may sigh, but he must not puff. To the train of Momus are the fat men remanded. In vain beats the faithfullest heart above a 52-inch belt. Avaunt, Hoover! Hoover, forty-five, flush and foolish, might carry off Helen herself; Hoover, forty-five, flush, foolish and fat is meat for perdition. There was never a chance for you, Hoover.
As Mrs. Parker’s roomers sat thus one summer’s evening, Miss Leeson looked up into the firmament and cried with her little gay laugh:
“Why, there’s Billy Jackson! ”

“ Hoover was now twenty-four, and a man of large reputation in mining circles in Australia and London, with a salary to correspond. He had spent about twenty-four months in West Australia, although they ran over all of one and parts of two other years, so that he is generally credited with having remained there three years. And he could have gone on among the Australian mines for as many years as he liked, for the big men in London now fully realized that they had in this young American [Pg 78] engineer the unusual man, and that his only limit in Australia would be the limit of the possible. ”

“ Hoover have got the whole seventeen sticking in his craw at the thought, and I'm downright sorry for him."
"Yes, Bettie, men have got sensitive gullets when it comes to swollering a joke on theyselves," said Mother Mayberry, as she joined in the widow's merry laugh at the plight of the embarrassed widower. "Looks like when we all can trust Mr. Hoover to be so good and kind to you and your children, after he have done waded into the marrying of you, we oughter find some way to save his feelings from being mortified. Can't you hatch out a idea, Elinory?" ”

“ Hoover in 1849 came to Los Angeles with his wife, his son, Vincent A. Hoover, 201 then a young man, and two daughters, the whole family traveling by ox-team and prairie schooner. They soon discovered rich placer gold-beds, but were driven away by hostile Indians. A daughter, Mary A., became the wife of Samuel Briggs, a New Hampshire Yankee, who was for years Wells Fargo's agent here. For a while the Hoovers lived on the Wolfskill Ranch, after which they had a vineyard in the neighborhood of what is now the property of the Cudahy Packing Company. ”

“ It did not take a prophet or seer to see in Herbert Clark Hoover, that master of vast engineering projects who had given himself so generously to helping his fellow-Americans in distress, a man fitted to meet the needs of the time. And Mr. Walter H. Page, American Ambassador to England, appealed to Mr. Hoover, American in London, citizen of the world and lover of humanity, to act as chairman of the Commission for Relief in Belgium.
“Who is this Mr. Hoover, and will he be really able to man and manage the relief-ship?” was demanded on every side, in America as well as in Europe. ”

“ Three-fingered Hoover had never been regarded an artful man, but now, all at once, for the first time in his life, he practised a subtlety. He became acquainted with Mary Lackington; I am not sure that he did not meet Sir Charles at the firemen's muster in Pueblo some years before. Getting acquainted with Miss Mary was no hard thing; the girl flitted whithersoever she pleased, and she enjoyed chatting with the miners, whom she found charmingly fresh, original, and manly, and as for the miners, they simply adored Miss Mary. Sir Charles owed his popularity largely to his winsome daughter. ”

“ Whenever Hoover came, he tried to keep his presence unknown except to us and Minister Whitlock and the heads of the Belgian organization and the German Government with whom he had to deal. He would not go, if he could help it, to the soup lines and children's canteens. Like many another man of great strength, he is a man of great sensitiveness. He cannot see suffering without suffering himself. ”

“ If Hoover went, they too must go, or Hoover senior would hear and ask the reason, and the Doctor hated to be cross-questioned about his school. His methods were his own; one might almost say the boys were too.
"Using blasphemous and profane language again!" he finally began, as he stood and glared at the scowling pupil. "Gentlemen never abuse a servant for obeying orders. Gentlemen avoid the use of profanity. We must have a new name,—a more descriptive title for our [121] monstrum horrendum, our roaring Polyphemus. What say you, Bertram, Imperator? ”

“ And when Halsey could check the angry torrent of his words, it transpired that Hoover had taken occasion, with much blasphemy and bad language, to abuse him for having told about the fight. Hoover came in ten minutes later, glancing shiftingly around. "Say, did that cur tell on me?" he whispered to Turner, as he sidled into his seat, and Turner turned his back and bade him go to Halifax, but Briggs nodded yes. It is an ill wind that blows nobody good. The Doctor came with gloom in his eye and thunder on his tongue. Things had been [118] going amiss. Not another word had been heard of Snipe. ”

“ Hawksworth was suddenly awake. The chill of early dawn penetrated his face and hands, and his hair sparkled with light jewels of dew. His leather couch was moist and glistening, while the pale sky above was blocked by a tapestried canopy. Only in the east, above the white railing of the rooftop, could he see the glitter of a waning Venus, her brief reign soon to dissolve in the red wash of early sun. ”

“ This brought the Kingsbridge crowd up howling wrathfully, and Locke, recovering his position at the pan, cried loudly enough for Hoover to hear:
“Try it again, old boy—try it again, and they’ll be coming after you with war clubs and scalping knives.”
Captain Harney ran out and grabbed Hoover. “Keep your head, Jock—keep your head,” he begged. “He’s won the crowd. He’s got ’em with him. You’ll start a fight that’ll mean busted heads if you hit him on purpose.” ”

“ The London firm had stipulated, too, that their new man should be unmarried. Hoover was still that, although he had begun to get impatient about what seemed to him an unnecessary delay in carrying out his decision already made in college. As a matter of fact, there was still no definite engagement between him and the girl of the geology department, but there was an informal understanding that some day there might be a formal one. ”

“ But Herbert Hoover ran away for keeps. He did not run away to ship before the mast or to kill Indians. Nor did he run very far, only to Portland and to Salem, which his geography had already taught him were the principal city and capital, respectively, of the state of Oregon. And he ran away with the full knowledge and even tolerance of his relatives. But he went away to be independent, and to fit himself for the special kind of college to which he had already decided to go. ”

“ Hoover's sympathetic interest in the child sufferers from the Great War, and of his active and effective work on their behalf, makes one wonder about his own childhood. He is not so old that his childhood days could have been darkened by the one war which did mean suffering to many American children, especially those of the South. ”

“ Hoover stamped his spikes into the ground, rooting himself, that the hit might be effective when he landed on the ball. He had felt of the first one; he would straighten the next one out. In fancy, he saw himself cantering over the sacks, with the runners ahead of him scoring, and the Bancrofters splitting their throats. Doubtless a two-bagger would score all three of the runners; and then, even if he did not reach the rubber himself, he would go out there and hold the “Kinks” runless in the last of the ninth. He knew he could do it.
“Ball-l-l!”
Jock sneered at Locke’s teaser. ”

“ People had already called at the Hoover ranch to see Mrs. Hoover's pretty adopted daughter. The master, on his way to the schoolroom that morning, had found a few woodmen and charcoal burners lounging on the bridle path that led from the main road. Two or three parents accompanied their children to school, asserting they had just dropped in to see how “Aramanta” or “Tommy” were “gettin' on.” As the school began to assemble several unfamiliar faces passed the windows or were boldly flattened against the glass. ”

“ Reason and humanity would prevail, and kindly Nature would make each battle-scarred field of struggle and bloodshed smile again with flowers.
The adventure of living led the Hoovers to Australia, to Africa, to any and all places where there were mines to be worked. As manager of some very important mining interests Mr. Hoover’s judgment was sought wherever the struggle to win the treasures of the rocks presented special problems. He had now gained wealth and influence, but he was too big a man to rest back on what he had accomplished and content himself with making money. ”

“ I say mysteriously, for, despite all the wonderful new knowledge of heredity that we have gained since the beginning of the twentieth century, the way by which any of us comes to be just the sort of man he is is still mostly mystery. Herbert Hoover is simply a kind of man who, when brought by circumstances face to face with the distress of a people, is especially deeply touched by the distress of the children, and is impelled by this to use all of his intelligence and energy to relieve this distress. ”

“ Herbert C. Hoover. He was chairman of an American benevolent society, of the woman's committee of which Mrs. Hoover was at the head. As the members of our relief committee returned home, the work was by degrees turned over to Mr. and Mrs. Hoover and their associates, until by August 27th we put all of the remaining work and funds into the hands of their society.
One day Earl Grey paid me a visit at our headquarters, and with him was Mrs. Waldorf Astor, now Viscountess Astor, who reminded me that "all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy," and insisted that Mrs. ”

“ They pulled it off pretty slick on us fellers. Hoover he lets Payson go and makes a bluff at chasin' after him. Then they gets off somewhere, splits up the money, and gives us the laugh."
Parenthesis turned on him in anger and shouted: "'I'll bet my outfit against a pair of green socks either one of 'em or both will be back here before this round-up is over."
"You will, eh?" snarled Buck. "Well, we're just waitin' for 'em. We'll swing Payson so high he'll look like a buzzard, and as for Hoover—well, he's served his last term as sheriff in this yere county, you hear me shouting." ”

“ But as to the genius of the man there could be no question; not even the poet Pabor had in all his glory done a poem so fine as that favorite poem of Hoover's, which, direct from the burning types of the "Leadville Herald," Hoover had committed to the tablets of his memory and was wont to repeat or sing on all occasions to the aggrandizement of Jake Dodsley's fame. Gradually the trend of the discussion led to the suggestion that Hoover sing this favorite poem, and this he did in a soothing, soulful voice. Barber Sam accompanying him upon that wondrous guitar. ”

“ Next to the bazaar stood the stables, and Hawksworth noticed flocks of small boys, naked save for a loincloth, scavenging to find any dung cakes that had been overlooked by the women who collected fuel. The air was dense and smelled of earth, and its taste overwhelmed his lingering memory of the wind off the sea.
The streets of Surat converged like the spokes of a wheel, with the customs house and port as its hub. Just like every port town in the world, Hawksworth smiled to himself: all roads lead to the sea. ”