MISSISSIPPI: He Died a Martyr

For eight months, Mississippi's gnome-like Theodore Bilbo had been waiting for the day he would descend on Washington and reclaim his seat in the U.S. Senate. Part of the time he spent dawdling around his echoing 27-room Dream House at Poplarville, Miss. Part of his exile was spent in New Orleans "getting my mouth reamed out." He had cancer of the mouth and he underwent a series of delicate operations.*

Despite pain and danger he did not lose the coarse ferocity which had endeared him to voters in Mississippi's piney woods. He bragged that...