The City Clerk’s Surprise Banquet
When Seattle's City Clerk Forrest tendered his resignation to the 'hard-headed' Common Council, they responded not with cold bureaucracy, but with a secret banquet and a cane with a musical head.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
When City Clerk Forrest tendered his resignation to the City Council Friday night, it was a matter of surprise and comment to those familiar with the personal relations existing between the honorable body and its popular factotum, that no animosities, further than a simple vote of thanks, were exchanged. The Common Council is composed of hard-headed business men, who do not believe in mixing sentiment with their public transactions.
After adjournment, however, the City Council had occasion to show their good fellowship for and kindly feelings toward its retiring clerk. Judges James and Messrs. Cummings and Cuthbertson had, in anticipation of Mr. Forrest's resignation, prepared an event that not only took him and the City Council by surprise, but delighted them as well.
In the clerk’s private office they had secretly spread an elegant repast to which the retiring men, Mr. Forrest and several others, were invited upon the adjournment of the meeting. The city attorney in a short speech explained how the feast had been prepared as a surprise, and Dan, being behind the door, near which he was standing, drew forth a heavy ebony cane with a musical head, which he presented to Mr. Forrest with the assistance of Mr. Bogart, Mr. Cummings and Deputy Clerk Felt.
Although taken completely by surprise, Mr. Forrest expressed in few words and actions that in no way deceived them how deeply he appreciated the kindness of his friends. He assured them of the happiness he at last felt in the retirement of his handsome traditional, and hoped that the pleasant relations existing between the council men and the officers of the night remain unimpaired in the future.
Then the discussion of the banquet began, and the excellent cake prepared by Mrs. Bogart were disposed of with a gusto that showed the fact that their appetite was approved. A handsome cake that had been an ornamental center piece to Mr. and Mrs. Forrest by Mr. Bogart and the party separated after drinking the health of the City Clerk and the incoming county auditor.
This 1904 account captures a rare moment of genuine warmth in local government, contrasting sharply with the often adversarial relationship between city hall and its staff today. It highlights how personal loyalty once softened the edges of civic bureaucracy, a stark contrast to the modern era where resignations are frequently accompanied by public disputes or cold procedural handovers.
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