Baltimore Evening Sun (15 August 1911): 6.

Let us be happy: the violin is a measurable improvement upon the calliope.

From all young males of the human species, until they can sing C in the bass clef, and all young females, until they begin to talcum their noses, kind fates, deliver us.

One of the abuses that a benevolent despot, if we had only one, might stamp out with a stroke of his pen is the absurd overuse of titles of honor in These States. I am not referring now to doctor, professor, colonel, major, governor and so on—these are old, old stories—but to mister, the common English appellation of all reputable men. Just as professor has been degraded by its application to acrobats, shoe-polishers and cornet players, and doctor by its application to chiropodists, patent medicine manufacturers and mental healers, just so mister has been dragged into the dust by its application to politicians. We have not yet come, true enough, to calling prize fighters, aeronauts and baseball pitchers mister, but we are on our way. If the Baltimore newspapers can accomplish it, it will be done. Almost invariably they refer to the members of the local political camorra with a degree of seriousness and dignity befitting references to the British Cabinet. A political boss, in Baltimore, is always mister. So, indeed, is the osseocaput he bosses. A great excess of mistering afflicts us.

As the only unspecialized title of honor permitted under our Constitution, mister should be guarded with a great deal more care. The overuse of professor, doctor, judge, colonel and reverend is measurably less pernicious, because it is more palpably absurd. When a negro exhorter calls himself reverend, or a Turkish bath rubber calls himself doctor, or a dancing master calls himself professor, or a country squire calls himself judge—then it is sufficient to laugh at the fool and pass on. The world must have its clowns, and clowns must wear their motley. But the indiscriminate assumption of the older and, at bottom, far more honorable title of mister is a matter of greater seriousness, for it tends to break down the only visible barrier (at least in this country) between the man of honor and the man not of honor. The highest ceremonial compliment we can pay to Mr. Taft is to call him Mr. Taft. But what is that compliment worth when it is constantly offered to ward executives, municipal jobholders and members of the Legislature?

I am not saying, of course, that the men of these classes are invariably and unanimously unworthy of common respect. Nothing of the sort. There are good men as well as bad, honest men an well as rogues, intelligent men as well as numbskulls among ward executives and jobholders, and even among members of the Legislature. But the point is that these rare men are now obscured and injured by an absurd custom. The title of honor which should make them stand out from the Black Hand they mellow and refine is now applied indiscriminately to the whole Hand, and as a result it is worthless as a means of distinction. Every politician hears it. In his private capacity—that is, merely as a man—his lack of any claim to it is usually so plain that no sane man would think of giving it to him, but as a politician the local convention lets him use it. A scandal thereby arises, and hence these gloomy observations.

Two remedies suggest themselves. One is a law making it a felony for a newspaper reporter to call a politician mister, save after a legal process, in open court, has allowed the politician a right to the title. The other is the invention of some new title, or the revival of some old one, for private citizens of legitimate occupation and repute. The old English term of master suggests itself, but it suffers from the fact that its common abbreviation is identical with that of mister. Perhaps we had better go to France for the thing we need. Monsieur is not bad, even when pronounced Mont Sewer, as by American pilgrims. The shorter form of sieur, now obsolete in France, is even better. Sieur means senior, elder—not a defect in itself, for the spirit of our laws is against inherited titles, and no man can establish his own right to public respect before he is 40. Why not sieur between 40 and 60, and monsieur afterward—a special extra-honorable title, let us say, for those ancients who voted for Buchanan and have chewed tobacco for half a century?

From the first volume of “School Room Echoes,” by Mary C . Burke, a work designed to provide schoolchildren with the materials of elocution and to inflame them with patriotism and a passion for sound literature:

Once there was a little boy,
Whose name was U.S. Grant,
His father was a poor man,
Who, hides to leather, tanned.

’Twas in a tanyard, U. S. Grant
Spent his earliest days;
But for leather his love was scarce;
He wished for farmers’ ways.

And sure enough upon a farm
He arrived when he was six:
Like most boys who are well and strong
He liked to do bright tricks.

* * * * * * *

A soldier great this youth became,
In battles of two wars;
He was victorious and won praise
’Mid cannon and bullet roars.

After many years the people chose
And made him President;
In serving him country in the right,
Many were the years he spent.

In the year eighteen eighty-five he died;
The people thought it a pity;
At Riverside in an elaborate tomb,
He rests in New York city.

Certainly, these volumes must be added to the textbooks in use in the public schools of Baltimore, and that without delay. Under the abominable Van Sickle regime the pupils in the schools were taught the so-called poems of Tennyson, Wordsworth, Keats and other such laureates of the purseproud and silk-stockinged. The pernicious Johns Hopkins influence was paramount. The simplicity of the common people was attacked insidiously: their children were infected with a reverence for the unspeakable English language. But now, with all that folly put behind, there is a chance to restore the good American tongue, to inculcate good American verse. Miss Burke’s compositions meet the bill. It needs no great imagination to picture the pupils spouting them on happy Friday afternoons to audiences of proud school commissioners and weeping parents.

More excellent texts for sermons upon Sabbath observance:

Luke, xiii, 14 and 15. John, vii, 24.

The Voice of the People, as the harbor zephyrs waft it in:

I never seen so many people lookin’ for city jobs before. Whenever them suckers that worked for Preston think of the Water Departmemt it makes them sick. When it comes to dishin’ out the jobs, the School Board ought to help a little.