Miss Guggenslocker, when informed that the President’s carriage was approaching, relaxed gracefully from the stately reserve that had been puzzling him, and revealed an eager curiosity.  Her eyes fastened themselves upon the President, Lorry finding entertainment in the changes that came over her unconscious face.  Instead of noting the veneration he had expected, he was astonished and somewhat provoked to see a slight curl of disgust at the corners of her mouth, a pronounced disappointment in her eyes.  Her face expressed ridicule, pure and simple, and, he was shocked to observe, the exposure was unconscious, therefore sincere.

“You do not like our ruler?” he said, as the carriage whirled by.  He was returning his hat to his head as he spoke.

“I cannot say.  I do not know him,” she replied, a tinge of sarcasm in her voice.  “You Americans have one consolation; when you tire of a ruler you can put another in his place.  Is it not wise to do so quite often?”

“I don’t think wise is the word.  Expedient is better.  I am to infer that you have no politics.”

“One house has ruled our land for centuries.  Since I came to your land I have not once seen a man wave his hat with mad adulation and cry from his heart:  ‘Long live the President!’ For centuries, in my country, every child has been born with the words:  ‘Long live the Prince!’ in his heart, and he learns to say them next after the dear parental words are mastered.  ’Long live the Prince!’ ‘Long live the Princess!’ are tributes of love and honor that greet our rulers from birth to death.  We are not fickle, and we have no politics.”

“Do your rulers hear tin horns, brass bands, campaign yells, firecrackers and stump speeches every four years?  Do they know what it means to be the voluntary choice of a whole nation?  Do they know what it is to rule because they have won the right and not because they were born to it?  Has there ever been a homage-surfeited ruler in your land who has known the joy that comes with the knowledge that he has earned the right to be cheered from one end of the country to the other?  Is there not a difference between your hereditary ‘Long live the Prince’ and our wild, enthusiastic, spontaneous ‘Hurrah for Cleveland!’ Miss Guggenslocker?  All men are equal at the beginning in our land.  The man who wins the highest gift that can be bestowed by seventy millions of people is the man who had brains and not title as a birthright.”  He was a bit exasperated.

“There!  I have displeased you again.  You must pardon my antiquated ideas.  We, as true and loyal subjects of a good sovereign, cannot forget that our rulers are born, not made.  Perhaps we are afflicted at times with brainless monarchs and are to be pitied.  You are generous in your selection of potentates, be generous, then, with me, a benighted royalist, who craves leniency of one who may some day be President of the United States.”