Baltimore Evening Sun (12 July 1911): 6.

The lesson for the day is from the Book of Isaiah, the tenth chapter and the first verse.

The Voice of the People, as the hot winds waft it in:

I have nothing to say, but I’m ready to vote.

Some incandescent correspondent belabors me for printing, a day or two ago, a grossly incomplete and otherwise unsatisfactory road-map of the New Thought and its branches. He argues, very eloquently, and in the main, very sapiently, for the inclusion of cannibalism, which he regards as nothing worse than a faulty generalization, and as such typical of the New Thought and a blood-brother to vegetarianism, anti-vivisection and Fletcherism. Says he:

When the cannibal says that stewed missionary is an appetizing and nourishing dish, he tells the simple truth. But when he proceeds, from that basis, to the doctrine that an exclusive diet of stewed missionary is more appetizing and nourishing than the mixed diet of civilization, he falls into a logical error. The very same error is made by the vegetarians. They are right when they praise cabbages, but they are wrong when they denounce beefsteak. The trouble with them, as with all such ignoramuses, is that they try to make a half-truth do duty for a whole truth.

Luckily for me, I am not bound to pronounce a judgment in this vexed matter. If it will give the gentleman any pleasure I shall be glad to insert cannibalism to the revised edition of the map. But doubts linger with me: I fail to see any intimate connection between cannibalism and the main stream of the New Thought. The two things may be similar, in some respects, but I doubt that they are actually related. Cannibalism, in fact, was practised by millions of men a dozen centuries before the New Thought was invented.

Another correspondent argues for the admission of an extensive list of what he calls quack healing cults and occult manias, many of which are new to me. I rehearse a few of them:

What in the world is Osseocaputism? A philologist to whom I submitted the word returned the following diagnosis:

Osseo is from the Latin word os, signifying a bone.

Caput is a Latin word, signifying the head.

Ism is from the Latin word ismus, signifying a doctrine, theory, or practice.

Thus—Osseocaputism seems to indicate, in plain English, bone-head-ism, i.e., the estate or dignity of subnormal cranial penetrability.

But it is certainly improper to apply the coarse epithet of bone-head to a disciple of the New Thought, for his distinguishing mark is not a tendency to exclude ideas, but an extraordinary (and perhaps even pathological) willingness to take them in. His capacity for believing, in fact, is so marked that it may be fairly called his paramount trait, and he is constantly increasing it by exercise. Beginning, perhaps, by swallowing Emerson’s Essays, he ends by swallowing Eusapia Palladino. The habit of swallowing, indeed, grows upon him. It is difficult to find a New Thinker who has stopped at a single gulp. That psychical researcher who is not also a believer in theosophy, vegetarianism, chiropratic or anti-vaccination must always be a comparative rarity.

Upon a postcard, and anonymously, comes the suggestion that the institution of marriage should be credited to the New Thought. Says the writer:

Marriage gives a hard test to the influence of mind over matter. A man’s eyes may tell him that his wife weighs 195 pounds and that her complexion came in a can, and yet the emotion of love convinces him that she is still beautiful.

The error in this correspondent’s argument is that he confuses statement with belief. In order that there may be peace in this world, all of us are compelled to lie incessantly. For that reason, it is not well to put too much stock in the unsupported statements of a married man. If he has good eyes he can see a false eyebrow or a double chin as far as any of us—but discretion has been bred in him by bitter experience. He knows very well that the only place in the world where plain-speaking is absolutely banned, where the truth is inevitably and eternally an exile, is the domestic hearth. A man may tell the truth in his office and in his kalf, and even flirt with it on the witness stand, but when he goes home he has to be careful. The most innocent and obvious remark—such, for example, as one to the effect that tough beefsteak is unpleasant eating—is sure to bring down upon him a cruel and instantaneous punishment.

Thus it is not well to elect all married men to the New Thought without first giving them a chance to defend themselves–in secret. In the early stages of love, of course, it undoubtedly touches the borders of the New Thought. A man in love looks at his inamorata through a sort of mental filter. Her good points come through, but her bad points, as it were, stick in the meshes. He can see that she is beautiful, but he cannot see that she is lazy, or shrewish, or ignorant, or vain, or whatever it is that ails her. Later on, however, the filter breaks down—and then the laws of the New Thought cease to run. Such, at all events, is the testimony of those learned in that black art. Ignorant myself, I accept authority.

Boil your drinking water! Keep the growler going! Don’t wait for Saturday: bathe today–or, at any rate, tomorrow!

More astonishing contributions to human knowledge from the blue-book of the International Reform Bureau:

All beer-drinkers have rheumatism.

Notice how a beer-drinker walks about stiff on his heels … That is because the beer increases the lithia deposits about the smaller joints.

Sometimes (in beer-drinkers) delirium tremens results from a small hurt.

From a correspondent comes this forgotten scrap of history:

On the first day of June, 1822, a meeting was held, of which the object was to carry into effect measures for the permanent relief of the laboring classes * * * The meeting was enthusiastic and much money was promised. But history does not record anything further.

All of which teaches us, brethern, that the minutes of the Merchants and Manufacturers’ Association began to be written long, long before the Merchants and Manufacturers’ Association itself was born.

Preliminary (and entirely unofficial) report of the Greater Baltimore Committee:

H. L. Mencken