62 ADDRESSES AND STATE PAPERS

mination at this early date would be premature, a positive and heart-
ening omen revealed itself on the very day of my inauguration. Cer-
tainly, if a new administration can bring with it fair skies and eighty
degree temperatures in mid-January, it can't be all bad!

For the sake of accurate reporting, let me acknowledge that there
was another and less comforting omen also in the air that day. A
huge foreboding blanket of polluted air hung suspended in the
heavens over Baltimore, shutting out the sunlight and bringing an
early dusk to the city. That dark and monstrous cloud conveyed to
me an unmistakable message: "Yesterday I belonged to Millard
Tawes, " it seemed to say. "Today, Mister Agnew, I'm all yours!"

Omens... what are they? You want to believe in the good ones
and pass up the others as nonsense. Fortunately, I don't put much
faith in either kind... if I did I could be in trouble. Consider that a
shower at Government House has been leaking for days and hasn't
stopped dripping yet. That fact has brought me to a firm decision
about omens. When it's something a plumber can fix, it's not an omen.
When a plumber can't fix it... then it is!

Perhaps you've noticed things in Annapolis are starting to settle
down; that the weather itself has become more seasonable since the
Legislature has been in action. We have snow when there should be
snow. This, I assure you, is of little meaning or consequence. In the
election campaign I heard myself described by the Castle Set as some-
thing of a "cold fish. " If this description holds a shred of truth, then
I should find little difficulty settling naturally and comfortably into
my new environment. Besides, a new and determined governor must
make his own weather and generate his own heat... and that is
precisely what this new governor is determined to do.

I suppose, after the glow of election victory, one must expect to
feel the temperature drop somewhat upon assuming office. Abraham
Lincoln experienced something of a wetting down when he first took
office as president... and in his day there was no Hyman Pressman
holding the hose! Lincoln confided to a friend: "I am like a man so
busy letting rooms in one end of his house that he can't stop to put
out the fire that is burning in the other. "

I can't honestly say my thoughts parallel those of Mr. Lincoln. To
date there has been no real fire to speak of, and no one in my family
or on my personal staff has had the time or shown the slightest in-
clination to "let out" the fifty-two rooms in Government House, some