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Sideshow. Still spotlighted throughout the investigation's second week was big-bodied John Pierpont Morgan, though he was not again called to the witness stand. Hour after hour he sat to one side in a spindly little chair watching the proceedings. Clustered about him were his partners. Not a day passed but the country was told the pattern of his suit, the color of his tie. When the afternoon session was over Mr. Morgan would return to the Carlton Hotel, opposite the White House, where he and his friends were paying $2,000 per day for five floors. &3134; There he would dress, dine quietly, go early to bed. He made no off-stage appearances about Washington in the evening. In the committee room Senators found him an easy, pleasant gentleman who could give them cigars without mak-ing them feel under obligation to him. His partners' testimony he followed as closely as if he were hearing things about his own business for the first time. From Senatorial wisecracks he often got large belly laughs, with his narrow blue eyes wrinkling up out of sight under bushy grey brows. With newsmen he gossiped good-naturedly, told them about his bloodstone watch charm, joked about his own importance but firmly refused to break his life-long rule against interviews.
One day while the committee was holding an executive session in another room, a female midget, Lya Graf of Ringling Bros. Circus, wriggled through the waiting crowd and headed straight for Banker Morgan. Leading the 21-in., 22-lb. creature in her gaudy blue satin dress was Charles Leef, assistant to famed Press-agent Dexter Fellows. "Gangway!" Leef cried. "The smallest lady in the world wants to meet the richest man in the world." Before Banker Morgan knew it, Leef had plunked Lya Graf down on his lap. Newscameras went into frantic action. The spectators roared with amazed amusement. Banker Morgan grinned diffidently as he went through the act.
Morgan: Why, I've got a grandson bigger than you.
Midget: But I'm older.
Morgan: How old are you?
Midget: Twenty.
Pressagent: She's 32. Midget: I'm only 20.
Morgan: Well, you certainly don't look it. Where do you live?
Midget: In a tent. sir.
Lya Graf slid off the banker's knee. Pressagent Leef plunked her back again as the photographers yammered for more. "Lya, take off your hat," he commanded. She did not want to. Mr. Morgan backed her up: "No, don't take it off. I think it's pretty."
Her little voice shrilling with delight, the midget was finally escorted back to her own circus and the Senate's great side-show went on. Banker Morgan's partners stared in astonishment at their friend who up to last fortnight would only rarely suffer himself to be photographed. When Senator Fletcher, committee chairman, heard what had happened, he denounced it as a ''damned outrage," ordered the Morgan-midget films suppressed, telegraphed newspapers not to use them. When few obeyed, he barred cameramen from the committee room. The week prior Senator Glass, denouncing the committee's helter-skelter procedure, had declared: "We're having a circus here and the only things lacking are peanuts and colored lemonade." When told of Lya Graf, the peppery little Virginian sniffed a contemptuous "I-told-you-so."