We are coming, Uncle Ikey, we are coming millions strong,
For to see the haughty English don't do our Ikey wrong,
they sang out of the windows with provocative enjoyment.
The people waving on the embankments were in fact innocent of crime, committed or conceived. They had no champion of their own, and with a certain large simplicity they hailed as theirs the mare who had crossed the seas to trample on them.
Liverpool made holiday for the occasion.
The Corporation feasted its American visitors, while the big ship-owners gave a dance at the Wellington Rooms.
The Adelphi Hotel was the headquarters of the Beyond-the-Seas folk, and it was full to overflowing. In the huge dining-room, where every year the Waterloo Cup dinner is held, there was an immense muster the night before the race. Lord Milburn, the Prime Minister, was there, with the Mayor of Liverpool on his left, and the American Ambassador upon his right. One famous Ex-President of the Great Republic was present, and many of the most distinguished citizens of the two countries; Ikey Aaronsohnn with his eternal twinkle, was there, and Jaggers looking like a Church of England Bishop. Chukkers alone was absent. And he was lying low upstairs, it was said, with one of Ikey's Own at his bedside, and another over his door, to see that no harm befell him before the great day dawned. America might not like the great jockey, but she meant him to ride her mare to victory.
Lord Milburn, a somewhat ponderous gentleman, well-known with the Quorn, a representative Imperialist statesman, was at his best. And if his best was never very good, at least his references to Mocassin brought down the house.
"She is something moa than the best steeplechaser that ever looked through a bridle-ah," he announced in his somewhat portentous way. "She is—in my judgment—the realization of a dream. In her have met once more the two great streams of the Anglo-Saxon race. You have every right to be proud of hah; and so, I venture to say, have we. For we of the old country claim our share in the mare. She comes, I say, in the last resort—the last resort—of English thoroughbred stock. (Cheers, Counter-cheers.) And if she wins to-morrah—as she will (cheers), 'Given fair play'" came a voice from the back. "That she will get—(cheers and boos)—the people of this country will rejoice that another edifice has been laid to the mighty brick—ah of Anglo-Saxon fellowship on which the hope, and I think I may say, the happiness of the world depends."
The evening ended, as the Liverpool Herald reported, at two in the morning, when Abe Gideon, the bark-blocks comedian, was hoisted on to the table and sang the Mocassin Song to a chorus that set the water in the docks rocking.