Baltimore Evening Sun (28 September 1911): 6.

10 cents!–One Dime!–10 cents! Step UP and See The World’s Greatest Believer! The Marvel of Credulity! The Abyss of Faith! J. ALBERT HUGHES in feats of Hair-Raising and Fact-Defying Believing!!

He Will Believe, at Each and Every Performance, in the Presence of the Audience and Without the Use of Nets, Wires, False Whiskers, Anesthetics or Other Devices-- 1. That the late primary, save in one precinct, was “perfectly square.” 2. That the frauds in that one precinct were due to “individual inattention.” 3. That “the members of the organization are innocent.”

In Addition He Will Publicly Believe Any and Every Statement Made by Anyone in the Audience, in Any European Language!!!

As a Final Feat of Stupendous Credence He Will Believe That He Himself, the Said J. ALBERT HUGHES, Will Be Elected In November!!!! Don’t Miss This Refined and Elevating Exhibition (Special Matiness for the Little Folk.) See the World’s Greatest Believer! The Colossus of Credulity!! The Intellectual Sandow!!! Holder of the Police Gazette Diamond Belt!!!! Champion of the World!!!!! See This Exhibition of Unique, Unapproachable, Unexampled, Unmatchable, Unrivaled, Un- believable Talent!!!!!!! 10 CENTS. John J. Mahon, Manager.

N. B.–The audience is kindly requested to avoid all hoots, cat-calls or other noises while the professor is performing.

From the inaugural address of the discoverer of Joesting and Biggs, May 16, 1911:

It is important that an administration should end well.

And even more important, in the present case, that it should end soon.

Another extract from that great State paper, that noble confession of faith:

At the beginning I desire to take the people into my confidence.

Two weeks later came the general order forbidding all heads of departments to give out news.

Yet another beautiful thought from the egoiad:

To aid in inducing outsiders to invest their money and make their homes in Baltimore, we must maintain our reputation as a city of order and good government.

For example, by getting rid of Van Sickle and Fendall.

Swollen–swollen–and still swelling! But beware the needle that approacheth!

The lesson for the day is from the next annual report of Mr. John F. Weyler, Warden of the Maryland Penitentiary.

Why not make “Sonny” Mahon chairman of the Greater Baltimore Committee?. What man has done more to advertise our fair city?

At 7.55 o’clock this morning a painter boarded Car No. 2101 of the Preston street line, at Fulton and North avenues, carrying two buckets of bright red paint. He stumbled–and the paint went flying. Quick jumping saved the clothes of the men on the platform. They got a few vermillion spots--no more. The scourer will remove those spots at 60 cents a spot. But the platform was flooded with red point, and some of it ran down the step.

How long is the United Railways going to admit such obnoxious freight to its cars? How long is it going to carry paint cans, fish baskets, plumbers’ furnace, paperhangers’ buckets of paste, automobile tires and other such filthy things? Has it any rule against the practice? And, if it has, why isn’t that rule enforced?

A gentleman subscribing himself J. W. Bernardi comes to the rescue of the late Frederic Francois Chopin, piano-thumper and composer. Says he:

The musical fame of Frederic Chopin has been impaled by the free lance. And how easily it was done! “From the music of Chopin, kind fates, deliver us!”

Not at all, good J. W. I asked a humane escape, not from the music of Chopin, but from the nocturnes of Chopin–and the distinction indicates a very real difference. That same difference separates the humor of Francois Rabelais from that of William Dean Howells, a square meal from a rasher of fudge, Ossa from a wart. If Chopin were living today, his nocturnes would be printed in the Ladies’ Home Journal. And he himself, while writing them, would live upon mayonnaise and chocolate sundaes.

More and more it is coming to be recognized that the physical mental states of man depend upon variations in his nutrition, upon the ebb and flow of his victuals. A learned doctor of the Johns Hopkins has written a tome upon the subject--a tome four inches thick and costing $6 cash. Empiric observation beas out his abysmal philosophizing. The beery note in Haydn’s Surprise Symphony was detected by the critics 100 years ago, and is probably responsible for the continued popularity of the composition today. That Ludwig van Beethoven was find of rinderbrust mit meerrettig will never be news to anyone who has heard the vocal parts of the Ninth Symphony. And can you imagine a dyspeptic teetotaling Shakespeare writing the Dobgerry scene in “Much Ado About Nothing”? Certainly not. Roast beef and ’arf-and-’arf are in every syllable of it.

The trouble with Chopin was that he did not stick to any set diet. He lived in Paris, the home of daring and unearthly experiments in victualry, and he went much into society, which means that he sat under a large number of different cooks. Hence the astonishing variations in his music. With a good dinner under his belt he wrote his preludes and his etudes, most of his mazurkas and some of his waltzes. But when he wrote his nocturnes there were bonbons in his system–or I am no critic of the fine arts. The ingestion of a handful of soad-mint tablets would have improved them, mellowed them, lifted them from saccharine balanity–but the soda-mint tablet, at that early day, was as yet uninvented. The remedy for all malaises was then bleeding–but the more they bled Chopin the worse his nocturnes became. In the end they bled him to death. Poor fellow!