Baltimore Evening Sun (6 June 1911): 6.

The newspaper reporters now take up more of the Mayor’s time than any one of the heads of the city’s departments.—The Hon. James Harry Preston.

Perhaps if the honorable gentleman were less eager to fool the reporters and defy them and denounce them and so show what an intrepid dare-devil he is, they would take up less of his time—and he would waste less of theirs.

Discoursing yesterday upon the larghissimo progress of the Jones’ Falls boulevard, I ventured the prophecy that the work would be halted oy lawsuits on May 26, 1914, and that it would not be resumed until July 30, 1915. It now appears that I was wrong, and so I offer my apologies. Alexander Brown & Son already give notice of a friendly suit and no doubt it will be disposed of within a year or so, or say by September 1, 1912. Inasmuch as the sewer conduits will not be completed by that time, and it will still be impossible, in consequence, to begin work upon the actual boulevard, it becomes apparent that the aforesaid friendly suit will not hinder progress at all. Thus I am forced, to my great shame, to revise my prognostication. I now offer even money that the boulevard will be open on or before August 1, 1918, or just 12 years after the day it was proposed by Mr. Hendrick.

Good stories for the hummock and deck chair: “Conrad in Quest of His Youth,” by Leonard Merrick; “The Early History of Jacob Stahl,” by J. D. Beresford; “Love’s Pilgrimage,” by Upton Sinclair; “Members of the Family,” by Owen Wister; “Queed,” by Henry Sydnor Harrison.

“Queed” and “Conrad in Quest of His Youth” are fantastic and extremely entertaining tales in the manner of W. J. Locke; “Members of the Family” is a collection of Mr. Wister’s excellent Wyoming stories; and “Love’s Pilgrimage” and “Jacob Stahl” are intensely frank and startling character studies in the biographical style of H. G. Wells and Arnold Bennett.

Unless you are old and sinful and have a strong stomach, you had better not tackle “Lovels Pilgrimage.” Some of its chapters are of almost appalling brutality. Not even Zola was more reckless in his prying into forbidden things. But if you can conquer your disgust, you will find the book to be the best, by long odds, that Mr. Sinclair has yet done. It presumes to describe the agonies of a young author, an ardent believer in his own genius, who tempts the fates by getting married. The conflict between the artist on one hand and the husband and father on the other is presented with extraordinary insight and plausibility. Mr. Sinclair, as usual, burdens his narrative with much tedious discussion of social problems, but so long as he sticks to his actual story he is unfailingly interesting. The book shows that he has made progress. By the time he is 40 he should be doing first-rate work.

As for “Jacob Stahl,” it is rather more remarkable for its promise than for its fulfillment. The author is a newcomer, and here and there his lack of skill becomes evident, but in setting out to imitate H. G. Wells he has chosen a very good model, indeed. Too many of our young novelists imitate bad models instead of good ones. George Barr McCutcheon has fully 20 followers, and E. Phillips Oppenheim has as many, but Wells as yet has no more than two or three, and Joseph Conrad, so far as I know, has but one.

That one Conradist is Henry Milner Rideout, a native of Maine, but now a resident of California. His “Dragon’s Blood,” published two years ago, was a truly astonishing performance—a story worthy of being ranked, indeed, with “Nostromo” and “The Nigger of the Narcissus.” Rideout is now but 33 years old. An American novelist of even greater promise is Theodore Dreiser, whose “Sister Carrie” has been marked by the few. Two men could not be more unlike. Rideout goes in for pageants; Dreiser to a photographer of the commonplace. But each, in his field, gives evidence of a notable talent, and Dreiser in particular will undoubtedly go far.

From the report of the Chicago Vice Commission, a board of intelligent and unsentimental investigators:

An application for a license of any kind, whether it be to construct a house, run a push-cart, peddle shoestrings or keep a dog, must be accompanied by evidence that the applicants are responsible and reliable agents. But for a marriage license, one person, unattended and unknown and, as far as one know, an epileptic, a degenerate, or who has in his blood a loathsome disease, may pass his name through a window with that of a similarly questionable female, likewise unknown, and be granted the divine right to perpetuate his kind in turn, thereby placing a burden and blight on society and the community for generations to come.

Ah, the charms of an old-fashioned administration! What a delightful thing is the gumshoe! How sweet the whispering!

From a contributor whose name is suppressed because his children are already old enough to read the newspapers comes this:

Your effort to rake up all the sane and insane synonyms for “whiskers” greatly interested me. In other directions, the English language is even more rich. Let me call your attention, for instance, to the numerousness of our words indicating the estate or dignity of alcoholic exhilaration. A few:

And there are even more names for das Ding an sich—the thing in itself:

The State Senate of Ohio, a few days before the close of the recent session, expelled several newspaper reporters from its chamber on the ground that they had falsely accused certain legislators of taking bribes. So much for virtue. Since then one of the accused men has confessed and promises to go before the Columbus grand jury and reveal the names of his accomplices. So much for the truth.

Let us hope that the owners of the Beehive, at the end of its first year of prosperity, will furnish us with a report covering the following points:

1. How many of its tenants are firms that were induced to come to Baltimore by the Beehive’s advantages?
2. How many are new Baltimore firms that were led to set up business by its ditto?
3. How many are Baltimore firms that were led to desert their old quarters, which quarters now remain vacant?

From Mayors who fill the air with their exegetical eloquence, but are strangely reticent when it comes to public business—kind fates, set me free!

Boil your drinking water–and then don’t drink it!