Baltimore Evening Sun (4 March 1912): 6.

All that now remains is to give Jake the feather. The subscription list closed at noon today with a total subscription of $1,342.25, of which probably 40 per cent. is actually collectible. In addition. the Hon. Edward Hirsch donated a 40-ampere diamond from his private stable, and the Hon. Abraham Lincoln Herford sent a handful of chip emeralds for insertion in the stalk of the feather. The jewelers engaged to mount and engrave the instrument completed their work at 11 o’clock this morning, and it is now in the custody of the committee of arrangements.

As previously announced. it will be presented to Col, Hook at 2 o’clock this afternoon, in the Mayor’s reception room at the City Hall. The presentation speech will be made by the Hon. Bob Lee, and Col. Hook, in words well chosen but probably not few, will respond. If there is time left after he concludes, the assembled guests will partake of a buffet luncheon and empty a few kegs of beer. The committee in charge is composed entirely of Prominent Baltimoreans of Class A--i. e., of gentlemen who have served on the executive committee of the Merchants and Manufacturers’ Association, who have acted as honorary pall-bearers at at least 25 funerals, and whose portraits have appeared in the Sunpaper at least six times since January 1, 1911.

Below are the subscriptions received up to noon today:

James H. Van Sickle, Springfield, Mass. .................................$10.
Dead-wagon drivers of Old-Fashioned Health Dept. ................ 4.35
Children of No. 56 School......................................................... 3.10
Druid Hill Ave. Preston League................................................. 16.20 Cash............................................................................................ 2.
Clerks in Tax Dept. (third squeeze)........................................... 14.65
Charles H. Whiteford, Esq. ....................................................... 3.
J. Barry Mahool, Esq. ............................................................... 10.
One Who Has Smoked Jake’s Cigars........................................ .50
Association of Afro-American Divines for the Promotion of the Vice-Presidential Candidacy of the Hon. James H. Preston............................................ 4.
Collected by George Lewis....................................................... 6.25
Lord Baltimore Club................................................................. 22.
Greater Baltimore Committee.................................................. 9.80
John Hubert, Esq. ..................................................................... 2.
A sub-Mahon............................................................................. 1.
_______ Total..........................................................................$108.85
Previously acknowledged....................................................1,233.40
________ Total to date...........................................................$1,342.25

Colonel Hook, it is said, will hasten to make use or the feather at the first public banquet which he and the super-Mahon attend together.

Whatever has became of them bugs who went around shootin’ off hot air about clappin’ Murray Vandiver into the calaboose?

All the current pother about hotel rates during the Democratic National Convention only shows again how foreign the cold fact is to public discussion in the United States. The truth is, of course, that the persons who attend public affairs are so used to being overcharged that it would amaze and flabbergast them if they were not. At St. Louis, in 1904, I occupied a room with two other men and the three of us paid $20 a day for it. At Chicago, the same year, I paid $6 a night for the privilege of sleeping on a cot in a hallway. At Philadelphia, in 1900, the average rate, I believe, was $5 a man aday. At Denver, in 1908, four men slept in a room and paid $6 a piece. At Chicago, in 1908, two men, sleeping in a single bed, paid $30 a day! And so at every other national convention, Democratic or Republican.

One thing that is constantly overlooked by the critics of the hotels is that a good part of the $100,000 bribe paid to bring the convention here was contributed by hotel men. One manager, for example, subscribed $1,000. He must get it back in six brief days. How is he to do it unless he doubles his rates? But that doubling will give Baltimore a black eye! Rubbish! If the Baltimore hotels should reduce their rates to normal the delegates and camp-followers would go away calling us suckers. They expect to pay through the nose for everything they get. Such is the custom, such is tradition.

The one thing they will ask of us, and with justice, is that we get our money back according to the rules, and not by chicanery and physical violence. At Chicago, in 1904, pickpockets ran wild among the delegates and many a boozy Democrat lost the savings of four years. One man from the South was actually stuck up and robbed in broad daylight on a downtown street corner--a corner an conspicuous as that of the Emerson Hotel. I myself lost $4, a gold toothpick and a rabbit foot in the convention hall. Let us have none of that sort of enterprise in June. Marshal Farnan, if I make no mistake, will prohibit it absolutely, and it will be the duty of every good citizen to aid him to the extent of promising to pick no pockets personally.

If them stuffers don’t chip in and buy Stovey Brown one of them silver-plated ice pitchers, then don’t talk to me no more about no gratitude no more.

The unspeakable Anderson to the Right Hon. Mahoni Amicus:

I tell you frankly * * * that you might just as well come out to the open and have a run for yonr money.

Is this a decent way to speak to the modern Andrew Jackson, the reincarnated Savonarola, the purest heart in all Christendom, the loftiest pile of brains in all the intellectual Alps? Are such terms fit for addressing the greatest Mayor that Baltimore ever had, the greatest citizen that Maryland ever had? Is it thus that honest men make speech to archangels, saints, conquerors and genii? For shame, Anderson! Go to Hook and learn reverence!

Sometimes, on a still night, you kin hear them stuffers snickerin’ all the way down to Tolchester. An’ when the ex-sheriffs git together and begin to poke each other in the ribs, you kin hear them nearly to Harper’s Ferry almost.

Tip for the camerlengo of the Vice Crusaders, baffled in his attempt to paralyze the kicking lady of the Empire Theatre sign:

Sixteen undershirts are on shameless exhibition in a Baltimore street window.

Only 27 days more of purple for the Right Hon. James McC. Trippe. Then a soft job in the City Hall and the swift waters of oblivion.

It don’t hardly seem like nobody don’t hardly hear scarcely nothing no more outen them boomers no more.

From an article by the Hon. the super-Mahon, in the discreet third person, in the current issue of his personal wochenblat:

If Mr. Anderson wants a fight, he can get one from the Mayor.

Maybe the honorable gentleman will now tell us how Mr. Anderson can prove that he does want a fight. Is it to be assumed that his remarks to date have indicated a yearning for peace?