"Listen here, Mr. West. I understand your feelings and your position
just like they was print, and I was reading them over your shoulder.
You're walking with y'r eyes on the skies, and you don't like to look at
the ground to see that you don't break nothing as you go forward. Your
mind's full of the maw'l idea and desire to uplift the people, and it's
kind of painful to you to stop and look at the plain practical way by
which things get done. But I tell you that everybody who ever got
anything big done in this world, got it done in a practical way. All the
big men that you and I admire--all the public leaders and governors and
reform mayors and so on--got where they have by doing practical good in
a practical way. Now, you don't like me to say that if you do so-and-so,
you'll be in bad with the State leaders, f'r that looks to you as if I
thought you could be infloonced by what would be your personal
advantage. And I honor you f'r them feelin's which is just what I knew
you'd had, or I wouldn't be here talkin' to you now. But you mustn't
blame others if they ain't as partic'lar, mebbe, as to how things might
_look_.
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