Baltimore Evening Sun (27 October 1911): 6.

THE FREE LANCE

Only 1,303 days more! Alas, that joys should fade so soon!

The doughnut for the softest, juiciest platitude of the campaign goes to the Hon. William Cabell Bruce. Here it is:

Mr. Hughes is being badly advised.

Not even the Hon. John Walter Smith, that super-unctuous soothsayer, has ever surpassed this one.

Suggestion for a coat-of-arms for a certain distinguished camorra of Prominent Baltimoreans:

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The standing of the clubs in the National Typhoid League for the week ending September 30, as reported by the unsentimental mathematicians of the Public Health and Marine Hospital Service:

Baltimore...................... 895 New York...................... 357
Pittsburgh...................... 562 Boston........................... 298
Cleveland...................... 535 Chicago......................... 183
Philadelphia.................. 516 St. Louis.........................145

These percentages are based upon cases reported. Alas, they may be unfair to the Orioles’ rivals! The doctors of Baltimore, eager to bring the pennant here, may rush up a bit too hastily with their reports of cases. Maybe their eagerness carries them into actual error. Maybe they sometimes report typhoid when their patients really suffer from nothing worse than the sequelæ of banquetting.

Let us allow for that error. Let us turn from the reports of cases to the reports of deaths. When a man has typhoid long enough to die of it there is very small chance of an error in diagnosis. And there is equally small chance of mistaking one dead man for two. Here, then, is the standing of the clubs upon the basis of deaths:

Baltimore...................... 737 New York.................... 277
Cleveland...................... 481 St. Louis...................... 276
Boston........................... 328 Pittsburgh.................... 224
Philadelphia.................. 296 Chicago....................... 210

Baltimore, it will be observed, is still in the lead. The pennant is safe.

A gentleman resident in Piedmont, W. Va., writes to The Sun to plead for a new singular pronoun of common gender, The English language, as at present constituted, has no such pronoun, and in consequence some such sentence as the following is often heard:

Everybody should have his or her purse with him or her when he or she travels.

A clumsy langage, the English! But why use it? Why not speak American? Here is that same sentence in the latter limber and resilient tongue:

Everybody ought to have their pocketbook with them when they take a trip.

What could be simpler, clearer, more beautiful? The meaning is unmistakable and the whole sentence shows an exquisite mellowness.

Many other examples of the superiority of American to English come to mind. The case of the personal pronoun in what may be called the figurative third person, indefinite number, is familiar to everyone. This is how it is handled in English:

One never knows, on entering one’s home, how many of one’s relatives one may find there, drinking one’s liquors.

Observe the cacophony of the reiterated “ones.” How much better the thing souds in American:

A person never knows, when he goes home, how many of his relatives he is liable to find there, boozing up at his expense.

Even when the Franco-English “one” is actually used in American the perils of repetition are avoided. Thus:

One oughtn’t to beat their children too much. When one looks at them twins, he can’t tell which is him and which is her.

A loose, a luscious, a lovely language! A language full of grace and charm!

From the official organ of the Mechants and Manufacturers’ Association:

A better is more to be sought than a bigger city.

Treason, b’gosh! What has become of the Hopkinsplacentric theory of the universe? What of the theory that a doubling of our outfit of jobbing houses would make us all twice as rich? Send for the bloodhounds. Cotch and scotch the anarchist!

Meanwhile the Citizens’ Relief Committee has been duly buried, an infantile and pathetic corpse, and the Red Cross Committee of Fifty struggles with the stupendous task of appointing subcommittees. These be the times that try men’s souls.

Enter another apologist for Biggs the Apologist. This one, who subscribes himself “Citizen,” writes to The Sun protesting against the “unfair misrepresentations” of his hero. If any of that “unfair” misrepresenting has been done in this place I shall be glad to hear of it. What is more, I shall be glad to apologize for it, sincerely and copiously. What is still more, I shall be glad to give the gnetleman who brings it to my notice a box of cheap but sanitary cigars.

Is “Citizen” trying to nominate the Hon. Mr. Biggs for the Sob Squad? Are we to have one more martyr drenching the town with tears? Let us hope not. Baltimore is damp enough now. Hardly had the super-Mahonic flood drained into the harbor before another lachrymose statesman began to leak. And now come the first, faint sounds of a third gurgling. Enough is enough. Turn off the spigot, gents! Give us time to dry our socks!

Maladies for which even psychotherapy has yet failed to find a cure: