Colorful Relations, Chapter One

My cousin J. Craig Canada provided me with a story from the San Francisco Morning Call, dated 2 November, 1893, about our mutual relation, Colonel J.Hampton Hoge , who was to have been Grover Cleveland's ambassador to the Imperial Court of China, - that is, before drink loosened his tongue en route to San Francisco so that he made some frank but unflattering comments about the President and his economic policies to a reporter. He had also apparently assaulted a Southern Pacific Railway employee. Like Craig, I'm wondering if the phrase "nursing a small kitten" is a euphemism for the saloon he was in actually being a cat house.

I also found an obituary for Colonel Hoge in the New York Times, dated 14 Feb, 1903. He had apparently switched parties, but found even less success as a Republican. A biographical page on Colonel Hoge can be found on Craig's site.