The media were reporting that Gore was on Clinton’s short list, so I said to Al what I truly felt: “I’ve been reading about the vice presidential speculation and I hope you get it, I think you’d be fantastic.”

His feet squshed in the water as he went […] He tip-toed upstairs his wet shoes still squshing a little.

He unleashed his dog in the park.

And Strang sitting there before the Mayor in the leather-mahogany sanctum sanctorum of City Hall, bowing and scraping, genuflecting like a mandarin, dizzy with adulation, and Uriah Heeping before that exalted personage, His Honor the Mayor.