The Lakeland evening telegram. (Lakeland, Fla.) 1911-1922, 1915-12-23
THE MODEST FLORIDA EDITOR
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That IS, ! was to watch and to know
when and where they purposed NOV
ing and to try to influence their
routing. Those for me were glad
days. My pay and expense money
was large
! had the free entree to all of the
Plant Systems Hotels and bars.
knew Col. Roosevelt, DR.. Leonard
Wood Generals Coppinger and
Shafter, and my cousin, Ed Hays,
Col. Of the Seventh Cavalry and all
of the officers of the Fifth Army
Corps. and they all drank Menus
and fomery and the then popular
Gin Rickshas." Capt Jim Fitz-
gerald supplied me with unlimited
expense money.
One morning in luly-it was the
next day after the destroying Of
Ceryera's feet-I was at the front
of tho old Almeria Hotel, l saw a
cOmmotion over across the sandy
road that is now Franklin street. a
man was over there Offering single
handed to fight any one or all of a
regiment for creating disturb
ance N front of his office, small
two-atory board shack, the then
home of the Tampa Morning Tri-
bune. That man was Wallace
Stovall. went across to him, the
noisy soldiers moved on.
Look now at the advance made
from that board shack by the initia.
tive and steady energy of Wallace
Stovall to the 1915 home of the
Tampa Tribune. | will bet the best
box n cigars made in the greatest
clSar mart on earth, that if you
took only one copy of each edition
of the Tampa Tribune of 1898 to
1915 and counted only the words
boosting" and landing the good
features of Tampa and Florida they
would equal the entire number of
brick in every building street and
road IN Hillsborough county.
And yet, if all of the county COM
missioners in Florida went this day
into Wallace Stovall's office and
said to him, Here, Colonel, come
with NJ to Tallahassee We are
taking you there to install you Gov
erno' of Florida" his sense of self
effact ment would force him to take
a header into the Hillsborough and
dive AL the way to Galveston, and
yet he has ~given all of the very
Howe: OF his manhood to the up
building of Florida It's pity
about you newspaper people. You
boon, everybody but yourselves be-
cause OF your own self-effacing, and
then well we know all about nv
life long friend, Frank Harris. and
the entire State press, clamoring to
make him Governor and he PLEADING
time, and he and Wallace Stovall
and ! were boys together, and II
can out-sprint any man in Florida
wheh the incentive is sufficiently di-
vine.
Ard we go on up to jacksonville
ana 10 my courtly, thivalric learned
ana Versatile friend, Ben Harrison
WIN the best blood of generations of
statesmen in his voinr. most emi.
hen'ly fitted for any office in the
Sii' OF the citizcnry of Florida. lie
mas given every of the best DAYS of
his l:fe through the Florida Times
'nleh to the development of the
states every interest and there is
not enough cash in the U. S Treas
ury 70 get him to stand for office.
do often so lose patience with You
newspaper people that wish be-
ca Use of your perpetual self-efface-
mcnt that | could lay each and every
of you across my old Bingham apron.
When | finished you'd all eat off
he top of the mantelpiece for
month and yet my proudest possess
ion IL "a rowing commission" issued
o me by Joseph Pulitzer and R.
Wayne Wilson of the New York
World in 1891, and it gave to my