“Bless your heart, Miss Perkins. It’s good of you to be so loyal, but we can’t have Al Smith for president. He’s going to bring the pope in over us.” I couldn’t hide my astonishment. “He’s going to do what?” “There is a plan, Miss Perkins. Smith has already bought a palace for the pontifex, and he’s going to give the pope control over the military and everything else.” There wasn’t any reasoning with them, and I gather I committed a faux pas when, during conversation, I mentioned that I thought Robert E. Lee was not, in fact, the greatest man the country had ever produced.
