Baltimore Evening Sun (24 July 1911): 6.

From a Baltimore banker interested in the American language comes this interesting specimen—the composition, it would seem, of an American-speaking earthling who failed to meet a draft and was called to book for his failure:

Jentel men. You leter receve. You want to no wat i Haf to say: I will not bee able to doo Justis. I Haft to bee like Mick Hoo was Halling potatoes up a Hill and the tail board came out and Mike was a grait man to swaire and they sed Mike whie dount you Swaire By the powers i cant doo that justis: iam Selling that oil on comishon and i Hav only sold 1½ galons and comshon men dont Reeturne for goods till they sel it.

My apologies to the esteemed Mr. Wegg, of Belair, that master of all the arts. In this place Saturday I answered most earnestly a letter of criticism from his incandeseent pen—and the gentlemen of the composing room forgot to print the letter! You will find it among the Editorials from the People today. It has lost none of its high quality by being answered in advance--but, none the less, the guffaw is with Mr. Wagg, and if he will kindly nominate his liquor I shall be glad to pay the clerk at the soda fountain.

Portrait, “after taking,” of a Now Thoughter who lately cured himself of near-sightedness, and so lost all need for glasses, by intoning the words, “My eyes is O. K.,” three times a day for two weeks:

{illustration}

The Voice of the People, as the miasmas from the harbor bring it in:

Bill Garland ain’t afraid of no Reform League. He has went up against them muts before. Why don’t Preston root out them Republicans in the Water Department?

Only three years and ton months more!

The translation of Otto Julius Bierbaum’s malty anthem, “Gott sei Dank,” which I printed the other day, has brought from Percival Pollard, grand master of all American Ottojulians, the following version of Bierbaum’s “Das Herz in der Linde”:

The world has laid me on the shelf,
Oh me, oh my!
So here’s a rope I’ve bought myself,
Sing ho, sing heigh!
By hanging I will end my days
In these so lovely, leafy ways;
Fare you well, bully world, farewell, farewell,
Fare you well, bully world, farewell,
Fare you well, bully world, farewell!

From this fair tree I’ll make my start;
Sing ho, sing heigh!
Here on a time I carved my heart;
Oh me, oh my!
That heart was once a lady’s--
Farewell to all fair ladies!
Fare you well, bully world * * *
Da capo. * * *

These blossoms blow so sweet that day,
Oh me, oh my!
The day she laughed and went away;
Sing ho, sing heigh!
Today I cannot even find
The heart I carved upon this rind!
Fare you well, bully world * * *
Da capo. * * *

Since here my heart is wiped out so,
Oh me, oh my!
Tis you must help me hence to go;
Sing ho, sing heigh!
The flame of love is buried here;
Here will I drop myself—a tear.
Fare you well, bully world, farewell, farewell
Da capo. * * *

Pollard says that this affecting ditty is to be sung “standing or sitting, but beside a tree.” He means, of course, a linden tree, but the linden tree is somewhat unfamiliar in America, and no doubt an oak or a beech would answer just as well. “Das Herz in der Linde” (The Heart Carved on the Linden Tree) goes back to Bierbaum’s vaudeville days and has been set to music by Oscar Strauss composer of “The Waltz Dream” and “The Dollar Princess.” More soon about Otto Julius.

From persons who accent “interesting” on the third syllable, and Salvation Army rhetoricians with sobs in their voices, and vaudeville monologuists who offer to “relate an incidence,” and newspaper reporters who report that the dead man’s wife was “greatly shocked” by his departure, and all men who embellish their persons with the emblems of tin-pot fraternal orders--kind fates, deliver us!

The conjugation of the verb “to boom,” in the American language, as a volunteer grammarian sends it in:

present tense. First Person I boom We boom Second Person Thou boomst You boom Third Person He booms They boom

past tense. First Person I bum We bum Second Person Thou bumst You bum Third Person He bum They bum

past perfect tense. First Person I had bim We had bim Second Person Thou hadst bim You had bim Third person He had bim They had bim

Examples: Whatever became of them guys that bum the town two years ago? Baltimore would be more better off today if them guys had really bim it right.

When, in 1737, the present British law “for the regulation of stage plays” was being debated to Parliament, Lord Chesterfield arose in the House of Lords and made the following earnest protest against the establishment of a censorship—a protest as sound and as pertinent in this present day of frenzied moralizing and censoring as it was when it was made:

I shall never be for establishing such a power as is proposed by this bill. If poets and players are to be restrained, let them be restrained as other subjects are by the known laws of their country: if they offend, let them be tried, as every Englishman ought to be, by God and their country. Let us not subject them to the arbitrary will and pleasure of any one man. A power lodged in the hands of a single man, to judge and determine without limitation, control or appeal, is a sort of power unknown to our laws and inconsistent with our Constitution; it is a higher and more absolute power than we trust, even to the King himself. I must, therefore, think we ought not to vest any such power in his Majesty’s Lord Chamberlain.

The last chapter of contributions to the thesaurus of synonyms for intoxicated:

Beached, Submerged, Saturated, Charged, Embalmed, Primed, Unhorsed, Carbonated, Preserved, Loos-legged, Afloat, Diluted.