Eye of Gawd

Hate is a blinding thing and fear renders some men speechless. Yet James Thomas ("Tom Tom") Heflin, Senate "fat boy" senior statesman from Alabama, who mortally hates and fears the Roman Pope, can still see out of his pale-blue eyes; can still talk and talk and talk.

Last week, during one of his chronic outpourings in the Senate about Candidate Smith, Roman Catholicism, fiendish plots and murderous conspiracies, he said:

"The Roman hierarchy has ordained it that he [Candidate Smith] must be President ; and let me remind you of what they have done already. They have put the cardinals' color right here in the presidential room of the capitol. The green curtains that hung there for years and years . . . have been taken down and the blood-red cardinal velvet curtains have been hung up, and they have taken the green top off of the President's desk and put a red one on that . . . some smooth-fingered Roman employee I am told has thought he would take time by the forelock. . . ."

The room referred to is where the President goes to sign or veto bills when he does not choose to wait for them to be sent to him at the White House. Speeches on its decorations have caused mirth before last week's Heffling. Among the capitol guides is an angular-winded woman, who, when she has herded a group of sightseers into the President's room, points at a female figure painted on the ceiling, and chants in a nasal sing-song that can be heard down the outer corridors: "And that lady there is called the Eye of Gawd, yes, the Eye of Gawd. An' if you wonder why she is so called, just walk around the desk here, yes, this way around, follow me, watch the Eye of Gawd, it follows us around, wherever we go, sees you, sees me, sees everything we do, follows us right around to here again, well, that's the Eye of Gawd, an' it watches down over the President, when he sits down at that desk to sign all our laws, under the Eye of Gawd."

Directly over the Eye of Gawd room is the Senate press gallery.