for him who speaks or writes to escape. He has none of that egotism
which makes a self-confident man think himself the favorite of
fortune.

He said after his nomination at Chicago, "We drew to a pair of
deuces and filled." He did not say it boastfully as a man who likes
to draw to a pair of deuces and who always expects to fill. He said
it with surprise and relief. He does not like to hold a pair of
deuces and be forced to draw to them. He has not a large way of
regarding losing and winning as all a part of the game. He hates to
lose. He hated to lose even a friendly game of billiards in the
Marion Club with his old friend Colonel Christian, father of his
secretary, though the stake was only a cigar.

When he was urged to seek the Republican nomination for the
Presidency he is reported to have said, "Why should I. My chances
of winning are not good. If I let you use my name I shall probably
in the end lose the nomination for the Senate. (His term was
expiring.) If I don't run for the Presidency I can stay in the
Senate all my life. I like the Senate. It is a very pleasant
place."

The Senate is like Marion, Ohio, a very pleasant place, for a
certain temperament. And Mr. Harding stayed in Marion all his life
until force--a vis exterior; there is nothing inside Mr. Harding
that urges him on and on--until force of circumstances, of
politics, of other men's ambitions, took him out of Marion and set
him down in Washington, in the Senate.

The process of uprooting him from the pleasant place of Marion is