Today -100: September 27, 1910: Everyone loves a parade

Oklahoma Gov. Charles Haskell (the new state’s first governor) is on trial for conspiracy to defraud the government in the sale of Creek Indian land, which he and his associates bought under false names for next to nothing.

The New York Republican convention opens tomorrow. TR is there, and Vice President Sherman, and everyone is in a spectacularly nasty mood. Fun.

On the corner of 3rd Avenue and 137th Street in NYC, a recently released mental patient, “wearing a black slouch hat bound around with a tasseled cord of gilt braid,” ordered some little boys to “fall in.” They did and so began a parade that grew continually, more boys joining it as it marched up the street. A cop commanded the leader to follow him to the police station. “Only if my regiment follows me,” he said, and so they did, though when they arrived at the station house, the killjoy cop dispersed the regiment.