Key Pittman liked straight shooting, straight talk, straight whiskey. Despite his 68 years, he was tall, lean and lithe as a whip. It was said that he kept flat-waisted by bowing gracefully. He had plantation manners—the soft-voiced courtesy of his Vicksburg, Miss, breeding. But he was tough, too, in the tradition of Westerners, never more dangerous than at his extreme politest, with a laconic wit that shot from the hip.
The Senate's champion of silver was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, of U. S. aristocracy. His mother, Catherine Key Pittman, was...
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