The Brown Derby

Reflecting that all good things come slowly, that Rome was not built in a day, that patience is a virtue, that duty comes before ambition and business before pleasure, etc., etc., Candidate Smith passed a busy and contented last week in his executive mansion at Albany. He functioned in different capacities:

Financier. He reported to the people of New York on the state of their finances at the end of another fiscal year. The

State budget had increased some 16 millions, reaching $232,641,701. He explained how the money was spent, for highways, education, hospitals, prisons, conservation, claims, public works. He pointed out that the Legislature, controlled by Republicans, had only been able to lop $25,000 from his Administration figures, and had tried to add on "unnecessary" appropriations of $219,000, which he had vetoed. He anticipated a political outcry against "extravagance" by promising to defend his fiscal policies and the $16,000,000 increase anywhere, any time.

Father. "I got married 28 years ago on the sixth of May, and nobody gave me a tumble. If any photographers had been there I'd have stood on my head for them." That was Father Smith talking--joshing with reporters before the stately wedding of his daughter, Catherine. He pretended to know nothing of the plans. He perspired, showed his gold teeth, welcomed the guests, pointed out presents, laughed a lot and made jokes. Now and then he quietly put his arm around the slender, highstrung girl of 24, who, on the bright Saturday forenoon, became Mrs. Francis Joseph Quillinan. At the Albany Cathedral, Patrick Joseph Cardinal Hayes of Manhattan performed the ceremony and transmitted a special blessing from Pius XI. Afterwards, a father's natural emotions on his daughter's wedding day were merged with the recurrent emotions of a Candidate. For besides the "boys" from Tammany Hall, many a bigwig Democrat was in Albany to toast the bride and smoke a cigar and have a chat--Boss Frank Hague of New Jersey, Boss George E. Brennan of Illinois, Norman E. Mack of Buffalo and the Bosses of Syracuse and Utica.

Patriot. James Thomas ("Tom Tom") Heflin, Alabama's curious senior Senator, who mortally hates and fears the Roman Pope, advertised a Protestant rally backed "by the Ku Klux Klan and other patriots," to be held June 17 in Hurstsville, just outside the Albany city limits. Senator Heflin promised to heffle; admission, 25-c-.

Rome. Observers marvelled, and wondered what Candidate Smith and his managers would think, when James John Walker, New York City's glib and dapper Mayor, rated to be as smart and faithful a supporter as the Brown Derby could have, touched upon a ticklish subject, in a public speech (to some Roman Catholics) as follows: "It is not so long since I was forced to listen to a tirade of a sort not unfamiliar to you, when a friend from one of the bucolic districts asked me if it were not a fact that all my public acts were dictated from Rome. I said no--I had to be honest with him--they were not, but more's the pity.

"Then he said to me: 'Now really, don't you know that if Al Smith is elected President he will take his orders from Rome?'

"And I answered him, 'I hope to God he does,' because of the patriotism and the love of country in my heart. I tried to show him that during all the ages the Church of Rome has ordered nothing against civilization, and I almost got him to concede that it would be for the good of the country to have a direct connection with Rome."

Patrick Joseph Cardinal Hayes of Manhattan applauded Mayor Walker's speech and said: "If what you said tonight could only reach the ears, the hearts and the souls of the citizens of New York and also of our great country they would be made to realize that the United States has no better friend than the Holy Mother Church."