Baltimore Evening Sun (23 August 1911): 6.

The standing of the clubs in the National Typhoid League:

Obviously, the pennant is safe. Baltimore’s percentage is greater than that of the second and third notchers taken together. It is but 002 less than that of all the rest of the clubs taken together. Only St. Louis has the slightest chance of making a respectable showing against the Oriole champions. Nothing short of a pestilence could put any other club into the running.

Are these figures my own inventions? Not at all. I have taken them from the Public Health Reports of August 18 and they are based upon the returns for the weak ended July 29. The Public Health Reports are issued by the United States Government and are extremely accurate. Their one defect is that they are always a bit behindhand. The figures for the present week will not be out until about September 15. As they appear in the reports they show the number of cases per week per 100,000 of population. The one liberty I have taken with them is that of removing the decimal points--a liberty in no wise affecting their inter-relation.

The American language, that noble and elastic tongue:

I ain’t seen you none lately. No; I been away. Where you been at?

Freight observed of late on street car platforms:

A roll of oilcloth 8 feet long. A bird cage with a parrot in it. A bucket of whitewash. The top of a gas range. A stuffed eagle. A can of lard.

For the sake of the record, let it be said that the perfume from the Back Basin was strongest on August 4, at 2.30 P. M., when it killed all of the type lice in The Sun office and turned a sheet of litmus paper green.

No doubt, the book committee of the new School Board will soon give ear and eye to the “School Room Echoes” of Miss Mary C. Burke, to the great merits of which I called attention a week or so ago. Here is a collection of verses in plain American, so simply written that they are immediately comprehensible, not only to the pupil, but also to the teacher. Now that the public schools of Baltimore have been set free from the pernicious Johns Hopkins influence, with its affectations and its absurdities, the time arrives to return to nature. It is the nature of the plain people to prefer doggerel to poetry, the limerick to the sonnet, Burke to Swinburne. Therefore, let us give them what they want--for example, this exquisite ballad upon “The Indians”:

Many times the cruel Pale-faces Drove Indians from their own land; And this was often the cause of warfare, When Red Men their rights would demand.

Some time later, Indians said: “The Pale-face is not doing right, In taking away our homes and lands;” And swore they would cruelly fight.

Their lands were gone, resources, too, Propepr food they often did lack; Many a time did they cruelly kill And fields and barns savagely sack.

As time went on the Whites bethought Their cruel treatment was bad, And laws were framed, sufficient funds supplied To retrieve the Indian sad.

And so the upilfted Red Man Fills a place in the world today, Studying, working and trying to live In a somewhat civilized way.

What could be more simple, more sincere? The child who has memorised that one sweet ballad has mastered all that is worth knowing about American history. But not all of Miss Burke’s flowers of fancy are rooted in historical soil. She strikes, at times, the didactic note, as in this stanza from a canto on “Politeness”:

Politeness is not mean nor offensive, Nor filled with undue ire; But justly critical though severe-- Such treatment we admire.

Or in these from a series of strophes in pralse of physical culture:

Fresh air is the king of all tonics, If used to the most proper way. Exercise freely in the open air And bring all the muscles to play.

Have regular mode of gymnastics; Walkin, running, stretching, bending Are very conducive to good soumd health. With strength and happiness blending.

Altogether, a noble collection, and one that the School Board cannot afford to overlook.

From a pamphlet entitled “Vivisection; an Enquiry Into Its Real Nature,” by Rev. J. Todd Ferrier, distributed in this fair town “with the compliments of the Maryland Antivivisection Society”:

Who is the Dog, and his friend and companion, the Horse? * * * What is revealed to us * * * shows us that these Creatures are living souls and not mere transitory lives * * * Once upon the Human Kingdom they dwelt as Human Children * * * But the Golden Age passed away * * * The whole of the Human Race were one by one drawn from the Human Kingdom, and though many of them rose and fell again, and rose again, yet there were those which were unable to rise up on to the Human Kingdom after the lost descent, and of these were the Souls now in the Dog and Horse.

Is this to be accepted as the official theology of the Maryland Anti-Vivisection Society? Does any member of that Society, clerical or lay, wish to expound or defend it? If so, I shall be glad to give him space. If not, how does the Society account for its distribution of such stuff? Has the old supply of imaginary horrors run out?

From all dinner invitations from friends who have wives who have sisters who have no living husbands, kind fates, deliver us!

From potted palms, dark hallways, red-shaded lamps, fire escapes, conservatories, verandas, pergolas, steamship decks, cosy corners, ingle nooks and all other such nefarious ambushes and man-traps, kind fates, deliver us!

In New York they have begun to jail New Thoughters as common frauds. Oh, the crimes of Mortal Mind! Oh, the sad doings of Error!

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

Watch them reformers set another bump. Nobody can’t tell me Arthur Gorman won’t make no good Governor. What’s the matter with Fred?

Contributions to the new thesaurus of unprecedented similes:

• As tedious as a vaudeville show.
• An intelligent as a vaudeville audience.
• As utterly valueless as the opinion of a Prominent Baltimorean.
• As windy as an old-fashioned Mayor.