Baltimore Evening Sun (13 September 1911): 6.

Booming always brings results. For instance, in Des Moines. Not long ago a Greater Des Moines Committee was formed there, the usual flap-doodle was emitted, funds were collected and advertisements were inserted in a number of newspapers far and near depicting Des Moines as a veritable paradise of opportunity. Hundreds of men, reading these flaming announcements, flocked to the town and thereafter they plodded its streets looking tor work aid not finding it. One of them, reduced to starvation, tried swindling—and landed in jail. His defense was that he had been lured to the town by false pretenses—that he had been led to expact a roaring hive of industry, and had actually found a graveyard. Now the Greater Des Moines Committee is doing a lot of explaining. And no doubt the patriots who paid for the advertising are doing a lot of thinking.

From books with their leaves uncut, and from persons who pasture their children upon the sidewalks of their neighbors, and from postage-due stamps, and from hay fever, and from the Journalists’ Club–kind fates, deliver us!

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

The more they go for Preston, the more he aint skeered. If I was one of them Republican school janitors, I wouldn’t waste no time lookin’ for a job.

The standing of the clubs in the National Typhoid League, for the week ending August 19:

Watch that St. Louis club! Once it was in fourth place. Now it is safely in second, with a hand reaching out for the pennant. Let the Orioles beware!

Only three years and eight months more!

An English psychologist, discoursing upon the ancient art of swearing, gives the following partial list of eminent Englishmen who have practiced it with affection and skill:

It may surprise many connoisseurs to hear that Gladstone, an extremely pious man, had a cousiderable weakness for profanity in its higher forms, and yet such was the case. An example of his technique is given in “The Life and Letters of Sir James Graham.” Sir George Cornewall Lewis, writing to Sir James on January 4, 1853, said:

I have been told, in strict confidence, that when the budget arrived Gladstone’s patience was so far exhausted that he was overheard to say in an audible voice that Disraeli was a d———d rascal.

The Grand Old Man, who was then neither grand nor old, was standing for Oxford University’s seat in Parliament, and Lewis cautioned Graham not to repeat the anecdote, for fear that it would cost Gladstone the votes of the Oxford dons. Graham obeyed—and Gladstone was elected.

Queen Victoria was bitterly opposed to swearing, but both of her great prime ministers, Palmerston and Gladstone, pursued the art. Another distinguished practitioner was her brother, the Duke of Cambridge. On one occasion, while reviewing a brigade of troops, she overheard the commander, Lord Mark Kerr, swear at his men, and promptly sent the Duke—of all men!—to reprimand him. This the Duke did in the following words:

Look here, Mark, her Majesty heard you swear, and she said she was d———d if she would stand it!

Some kind but anonymous friend sends me the following extract from a speech lately delivered in the British Parliament by John A. Roebuck, M. P.:

The plain fact is that we meddle too much with one another. If each individual would take care of his own goodness, instead of being so anxious about the goodness of his neighbor, we should have more virtue in the world, though we might have a little less show.

Which states the case against the militant moralists of this vicinage with such perfect aptness that I am very glad to embalm it in print.

The titles of some of the new vaudeville songs:

I’ll Try Anything Once.
If the Garden of Roses Should Change to Thorns.
You’ll Do the Same Thing Over.
Maybe That Is Why I’m Lonely.
You’ve Got to Take Me Home Tonight.
The Hour That Gave Me You.
Father’s Allowed to See Us Once a Year.
The Whole World Reminds Me of You.
Blow Your Horn; You’re in a Fog.
I Want to Powder My Nose.
It’s Not What You Had, But What You Have Right Now.
Go Home and Tell Your Mother.
I Fall for Every Girl I Meet.
You’re Goin’ a Wish You Had Me Back.
Don’t Say Anything You Vouldn’t Before Your Mother.

Which recalls those sweet classics of yesterday:

Sister’s Teeth Are Filled With Zinc.
They Are Moving Grandma’s Grave to Build a Sewer.
When Uncle Took His False Nose Off to Sneeze.

From a moralist in the fair city of Pocomoke—can it be the same who dropped such salt tears upon the wife-beaters and murderers of Back River?—comes a long and eloquent defense of the Maryland Anti-Vivisection Society, but inasmuch as it does not answer any of the plain questions I have put to the society I have taken the liberty of depositing it in my wastebasket. With the doctrine that vivisection should be regulated I have been at great pains to make no quarrel. My one protest is against the anti-vivisectionist custom of putting theosophists, actors, poets, spookchasers, mental healers and dead men on the stand to prove things that are obviously not true. If this custom has intelligible reasons behind it, I shall be very glad to print those reasons. If not, I respectfully retire from the discussion.

The American language, so liquid, so luscious:

I like a belt that’s loosern what this one is. Well, then, why don’t you unloosen it more’n you got it unloosened?

Contributions to the lexicon of vaudeville slang:

Dumb Act—One without spoken dialogue; for example, an acrobatic or “high-class” music act.
Clean—Anything not downright obscene.
Rapid-Boy—A comedian whose witticisms gush from his gullet like sparks from a Roman candle.
Clean-Up—A hit.
Classical–Any musical composition not in ragtime.