The features were regular, the expression eager and appealing.
"I would have pronounced him a musician, even if I had not heard that
he was one," said Ashton-Kirk. "The head and face formations have all
the qualities." Then he ran over the story of Spatola's arrest and the
causes that led up to it. At the finish he smiled. "They have tried
and convicted him on the first page. If there was any way for them to
do it, they'd execute him in the evening editions and print his dying
words in the sporting extra. But," and he nodded his head
appreciatively, "Osborne has a good case against him, at that."
Both the clerk, Isidore Brolatsky, and Berg seemed to have talked
freely to the newspapermen. The character of Hume was treated in a
highly colored manner. The visits of the Italian musician to the
numismatist, his ambition to shine as another Kubelik, his
ungovernable temper, the high words that followed Hume's frequent
sneers at his ambition and the fact that he once drew a knife upon his
tormentor, were presented in full. But what appealed to the
space-writers most was Brolatsky's story of how Hume had once called
Spatola "Mad Anthony," and afterward showed him the portrait of
General Wayne.
"This apparently drove him frantic," wrote one reporter, "and, noting
this, Hume frequently applied the name to him, and more than likely
displayed the portrait as well.
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