Bok couldn't prove that the cigars were bad, naturally. So smoke that
cigar he did, to the bitter end, and it was bitter! In fifteen minutes
his head and stomach were each whirling around, and no more welcome
words had Bok ever heard than when the President said: "Well, suppose we
go in. Halford and I have a day's work ahead of us yet."
The President went to work.
Bok went to bed. He could not get there quick enough, and he
didn't--that is, not before he had experienced that same sensation of
which Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote: he never could understand, he said,
why young authors found so much trouble in getting into the magazines,
for his first trip to Europe was not a day old before, without even the
slightest desire or wish on his part, he became a contributor to the
Atlantic!
The next day, and for days after, Bok smelled, tasted, and felt that
presidential cigar!
A few weeks afterward, Bok was talking after dinner with the President
at a hotel in New York, when once more the cigar-case came out and was
handed to Bok.
"No, thank you, Mr. President," was the instant reply, as visions of his
night in the White House came back to him. "I am like the man from the
West who was willing to try anything once."
And he told the President the story of the White House cigar.
The editor decided to follow General Harrison's discussion of American
affairs by giving his readers a glimpse of foreign politics, and he
fixed upon Mr.
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