Baltimore Evening Sun (19 July 1911): 6.

A contribution toward the declension of personal pronouns in the American language:

third person. Mas. Fem. Com. Nominative................ Him Her Them
Objective................... He She Them
Possessive................. Hisn Hern Theirn

Examples–Him and me have been friends for years. I saw you and he at River View. Them are the parties I meean. I thought the house was hisn, but it was hern. No; it was theirn.

Those earnest persons who now protest so eloquently against law-breaking at Westport and Back River seemed to be heartened by the dellusion they will really accomplish what they are after. Harmless folly! Let them pass their resolutions and pronounce their awful anathemas. For a week or two, perhaps, the hubbub will cost the lawbreakers enough to give them pain. Customers will be scared off; extra watchmen will have to be hired, and the day’s takings will decrease by 10 or 20 or maybe even by 25 cent. But in a little while the crusade will be over, the county cops will wink their larboard eyes–and the lid will be lifted, torn loose and heaved overboard once more. And so it will be forever and ever--or, at any rate, until the laws of Maryland, losing their purely romantic quality, are made to fit the actual facts of existence.

The helplessness of the county police is due, in the main, to the efficiency of the city police. The laws against betting on the races and against Sunday liquor-selling are often violated in Baltimore city--as they are, of course, in all civilized cities of America–but on the whole, the police make an earnest and pretty successful effort to enforce them. It is not downright impossible to get a drink in Baltimore on Sunday, but it is nevertheless rather difficult and expensive. A thirsty man, to accomplish the feat, must go to some trouble. If he is a poor man he must dodge up an alley, duck into a side-door and then do his drinking in a dark, hermetically-sealed and stinking barroom, in the company of a crowd of sots. And if he is able too meet the high cost of greater comforts, he must go to a hotel, register as a “bona fide guest,” and order and pay for a cooked meal that he doesn’t want, and, as a rule, doesn’t eat. In either case he is put to inconvenience and even if he is willing to submit to it he must first know where to go and how to get in and what to say to the watchman or clerk. In brief, Sunday drinking in Baltimore demands a rather elaborate technical equipment, and many a Baltimorean is too ignorant, too busy, too lazy or too much in fear of the police to acquire that equipment.

The consequence is that thousands of our citizens on hot Sundays cross the city line and seek relief in the county, where, on account of the natural scarcity of policemen, it is much easier and much safer to violate the law. Some go to the fishing shores (of which there must be at least 2,500 within 10 miles of the city) and there devote the whole morning to drinking and the whole afternoon to sleeping it off. Others, eager for a more varied bill of pleasure, go to the fried fish parks, and there make voyages upon the flying horses, see eighth-rate vaudeville shows, feast upon boiled hard crabs, try their luck at childish games of chance, and fill their veins with the wines of the country.

All of this, of course, is in violation of the law, and, in addition, it may be further denounced as a proof of stupidity and bad taste, but the fact must not be overlooked that fully 100,000 of the citizens of Baltimore regard it, not only as a perfectly moral way to spend Sunday, but also as an extremely agreeable way. Is the honest opinion of these folk to be disregarded? Have they no right, as citizens of a free republic, to a voice in the conduct of their private affairs? When, out of respect for the opinions of others, they voluntarily depart from the city on Sundays and practice their peculiar customs in a region beyond the city limits and entirely beyond sight and smell of those who object, do the latter still retain a right to criticise them and interfere with them?

I doubt it. The one sound objection to Sunday liquor-selling is that it tends to make Sunday noisy and merry. But suppose it to be done at some place so remote that the attendant noise and merriment disturb no one--what then? Do the laws of mental telepathy extend to morals? Has a man in Baltimore, or Towson, or Catonsville, any right to denounce, or even to have any opinion about, the personal habits of a man at Back River? Isn’t it, in fact, a cardinal principle of democracy that every community shall be free to regulate its own conduct, so long as that conduct neither endangers or annoys any other community? And isn’t it a fact that Back River is, to all intents and purposes, a separate community, made up entirely of persons who believe that the sale of liquor on Sunday is a humane and agreeable thing, and whose belief, if it harms anyone at all, harms only themselves?

The foes of the Rum Demon are ardent advocates of what they call local option, and they base their advocacy chiefly, if not solely, upon the democratic doctrine that every community should be free to regulate its own affairs. But no sooner does the shoe go on the other foot, no sooner does a community of drinkers lay claim to the same right, than the doctrine is repealed with a bang. And yet, at bottom, it remains a sound doctrine--so long, that is, as democracy itself remains sound. If we are all really free, then the Back River drinker is just as free as the Eastern Shore abstainer, and his belief that drinking is pleasant and invigorating is just as respectable and just as intelligent as the Eastern Shoreman’s belief that drinking converts the liver into a cobblestone and violates all ten of the Commandments.

But how about the objection that the Back River resorts are public nuisances, that they annoy and outrage the virtuous? Rubbish! They annoy and outrage only those who visit them. The Patapsco Neck mushik, passing on his manure cart, is certainly not so inviting a being himself that he can afford to complain of others. The damage that he suffers is entirely theoretical. If he pauses every time he passes, and so gradually drinks himself to death, the fault is his own, and the world is not a loser. And if he says that Back River is a resort of thieves and thugs, then he simply lies. Despite the fact that thousands of the lower orders go there every Sunday, and much drinking is done, serious crimes are almost unheard of. Your life and pocketbook are almost as safe at Back River as they are in Druid Hill Park. Now and then, of course, a drunken man rolls overboard and is drowned--but is the world so idle that it can waste time mourning drunken men who drown?