Poignant Cry

It was a problem as old as legislatures, But Homer A. Ramey, a Republican from Toledo, put it poignantly to his fellow Congressmen in the House one quiet afternoon last week:

"A few weeks ago in Toledo one of my constituents caught me in a restaurant and held me from 11:30 to 3 o'clock. . . . He had been reading about the days when Calhoun, Clay, Webster, John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson and a few others were alive and active. In those days, he said to me, there were statesmen. . . . 'You members,' he said to me, ought to be statesmen. You as good as promised when you ran for office that you would be statesmen.'

"He kept after me, and when the clock had gotten around almost to 3 p.m., I gave up and told him I would try and did he have any suggestions. . . .

" 'Read, reflect, think,' he said. 'Keep informed. Learn another language. Map out a program and fight for it, a broad, statesmanlike program.'

"So I finally said 'yes.' Then he said, as I paid the check, 'By the way, Homer, my sister's aunt and her family from Ottawa County are going to be down there week after next. I told them at home to never mind, you would look after her. She wants to see the town, and she would like to visit the House in session, and the Senate, too, and Mount Vernon and a few places. She would like to meet the President, but I cannot expect too much of you. ... Anyway, she will be there three days and you and your good wife, I know, will do things up brown.'

"So I said 'yes' to that too. Now what bothers me is how I am going to be a statesman and at the same time look after his sister's aunt."

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