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gave him the key to his own nature. I varied in my feelings about that. Sometimes I thought he had and he just had extraordinary powers of blocking it off. Other times I thought that he just didn't even see himself.

He certainly could be self-deceived for periods, or appear to be. He had the faculty of dropping a curtain over certain things and certain aspects of his experience, not appearing to notice them. Whether he did sub-consciously or not, one of course can't say.

Al Smith, on the other hand, had many fewer reserves. I lay part of that to Irish temperament, Irish habits, the habits engendered by his youth in an Irish-American community where everybody was poor, everybody knew what you paid for rent, everybody knew how much your father earned and when he died how much your mother had. You didn't keep up appearances. You couldn't keep up appearances and nobody did. The neighbors were kind and helpful, rushed in with what they could help you with, but they knew just how poor you were. You knew just how poor they were. There were no pretenses. There were no pretenses to respectability, or to leadership. Everybody knew all about you, just who you were and how limited you were.

Also, a part of it was due to that wonderful Irish good nature, which is part of the loyalty of clans. When