In 1896, when I was only nineteen, I made twenty-eight speeches, urging people to vote
for William Jennings Bryan for President. The excitement of speaking for Bryan aroused
a desire in me to enter politics myself. So when I entered De Pauw University, I studied
law and public speaking. In 1899 I represented the university in a debate with Butler
College, held in Indianapolis, on the subject "Resolved that United States Senators
should be elected by popular vote." I won other speaking contests and became editor-in-
chief of the class of 1900 College Annual, The Mirage, and the university paper, The
Palladium.
After receiving my A.B. degree at De Pauw, I took Horace Greeley's advice-only I didn't
go west, I went south-west. I went down to a new country: Oklahoma. When the Kiowa,
Comanche, and Apache Indian reservation was opened, I home-steaded a claim and
opened a law office in Lawton, Oklahoma. I served in the Oklahoma State Senate for
thirteen years, in the lower House of Congress for four years, and at fifty years of age, I
achieved my lifelong ambition: I was elected to the United States Senate from
Oklahoma. I have served in that capacity since March 4, 1927. Since Oklahoma and
Indian Territories became the state of Oklahoma on November 16, 1907, I have been
continuously honoured by the Democrats of my adopted state by nominations-first for
State Senate, then for Congress, and later for the United States Senate.
I have told this story, not to brag about my own fleeting accomplishments, which can't
possibly interest anyone else. I have told it wholly with the hope that it may give
renewed courage and confidence to some poor boy who is now suffering from the
worries and shyness and feeling of inferiority that devastated my life when I was wearing
my father's cast-off clothes and gaiter shoes that almost dropped off my feet as I
walked.
(Editor's note: It is interesting to know that Elmer Thomas, who was so ashamed of his
ill-fitting clothes as a youth, was later voted the best-dressed man in the United States
Senate.)
I Lived In The Garden Of Allah
By
R.V.C. Bodley
Descendant of Sir Thomas Bodley, founder of the Bodleian Library, Oxford Author of
Wind in the Sahara, The Messenger, and fourteen other volumes
IN 1918, I turned my back on the world I had known and went to north-west Africa and
lived with the Arabs in the Sahara, the Garden of Allah. I lived there seven years. I
learned to speak the language of the nomads. I wore their clothes, I ate their food, and
adopted their mode of life, which has changed very little during the last twenty centuries.
I became an owner of sheep and slept on the ground in the Arabs' tents. I also made a
detailed study of their religion. In fact, I later wrote a book about Mohammed, entitled
The Messenger.
Those seven years which I spent with these wandering shepherds were the most
peaceful and contented years of my life.
I had already had a rich and varied experience: I was born of English parents in Paris;
and lived in France for nine years. Later I was educated at Eton and at the Royal Military
College at Sandhurst. Then I spent six years as a British army officer in India, where I
played polo, and hunted, and explored in the Himalayas as well as doing some