Page:The autobiography of a Pennsylvanian.djvu/409

 Governor, I know, as well as any human being can know such a thing, that Matthew Stanley Quay, if here, would tell you not to listen to such appeals. I say to you. Governor, in all the sincerity of my heart that to call the legislature together at this or any other time during the remainder of your term would prove the most disastrous act you could possibly commit. Don't dim the lustre of your splendid record, but go on pursuing the splendid good road you have built throughout the length and breadth of our great state, and when your term ends you will feel grateful to yourself and pleased with the real friends like myself who urge you to keep clear of the vicious trap set for you by men who pretend sincerity where only selfishness, greed and hypocrisy lurk.

In writing this you know I have no motive save my love and affection for you and I am confident you will so understand.


 * Faithfully your friend,

At that time Wesley R. Andrews was chairman of the Republican State Committee. He wrote to me:

August 24, 1905.

My attention has been called to articles in the newspapers to the effect that the question as to the advisability of calling an extra session of the legislature was being considered, which statement, in the absence of corroboration, I do not credit, having in mind the general unreliability of the comments contained in a certain class of so-called newspapers. However, the matter is of sufficient importance to prompt me to write to you to the effect that having knowledge of the political situation in every county in Pennsylvania outside of Philadelphia and Allegheny, I desire to register my emphatic protest against the calling of an extra session of the legislature, if such action is contemplated, and for the reason the Republican voters of Pennsylvania are not in accord with such sentiment, believing, as they do, that the local matters in Philadelphia are not of sufficient importance to warrant the assembling of the legislature, at a large expense to the taxpayers, for the purpose of acting upon the recommendation of a few timid persons totally unfamiliar with the real situation. Again the calling together of an extra session of the legislature would, in my opinion, ruin the leaders of the Republican party in Rh