*I don't care a continental!

The Chicago Daily Tribune, Monday, February 29th 1904
(Note: Steunenberg incorrectly spelled Stennenberg)

*Don't care a continental ~ Don't give a damn. From Western Slang & Phrases (I had to go look that one up—really. I avoid neckties just like Frank and from now on I am going to try and go continental too.

I don't give a continental!

Related:
The Auditorium Annex (now the Congress Plaza Hotel).

Michigan Avenue, North from Auditorium Annex, Chicago

On this day:
On February 29, 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt formally appointed a seven-man commission -- the Isthmian Canal Commission, which reported at first to Secretary of War William Howard Taft -- to get on with the task of building the Panama Canal, one of the signal achievements of his presidency. The move came immediately after the brand-new Panamanian government, which had been helped into existence by the U.S.S. Nashville in late 1903, ceded control of the Canal Zone to the United States on February 23.

"With the century drawing to a close, a new taste for luxury ushered in the grand hotel. In 1888, Chicago cheered Louis Sullivan's Auditorium Building, embracing a four-hundred room hotel, an auditorium seating four-thousand, even an opera house."
— Big Trouble by J. Anthony Lukas

So now I have to figure out why Frank was in Chicago on 2/29/1904 (leap day)? Any guesses let me know. I can picture him sitting in this chair—with no necktie.