Baltimore Evening Sun (30 October 1911): 6.

Only 1,300 days more! But long enough to get a fatal overdose!

The Prominent Baltimorean In A Nutshell. [From the Speech of Mr. Omar F. Hershey to the Red Cross Committee.] When the Committee of Seventeen holds its first meeting it will appoint a Committee of Six and go home, just as the massmeeting which appointed the Committee of Fifty went home, and as this committee is going home after appointing the Committee of Seventeen. And nothing will be done.

Says the Hon. John Armstrong Chaloner, who is sane in Virginia and insane in New York:

The Hon. Joseph Hodge Choate is now stewing in his own grease and sizzling in his own sweat.

Which also describes very accurately the condition of several honorable gentlemen of Baltimore.

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

That indictment husiness seems to have blowed over. You don’t hear no more talk about it no more. Them reformers has got a long way to go before they ever get Preston’s goat.

The betting odds in the downtown kaifs, as my spies report them:

4 to 1 that Gorman will carry the city by 5,000. 1 to 7 that Hughes will be elected. 24,750 to 1 that the Mayor of Baltimore on July 1, 1915, will not be the Hon. James Harry Preston.

Contributions to the lexicon of American synonyms for married:

Rescued, Manacled, Lost, Denaturized, Civilized, Embalmed.

In the intervals of bawling for the commission plan, why not pause a moment and do a bit of supposing? Suppose, for example, that the commission plan were in effect and that the following commissioners were nominated by petition:

The Hon. George N. Numsen. The Hon. Thomas G. Hayes. The Hon. John M. T. Finney. The Hon. Edwin G. Baetjer. The Hon. Roger Cull.

And then suppose that this opposing ticket were nominated by the Hon. John J. Mahon and his merry men:

The Hon. James Harry Preston. The Hon. John Hubert. The Hon. Daniel J. Loden. The Hon. Robert H. Carr. The Hon. William Garland.

Which of the two tickets would have the better chance of winning at the polls? Which would carry the Third ward? the Tenth? the Nineteenth?

In brief, would the commission plan actually save us? Or wouId it merely change the terms and conditions of our slavery?

A cheap but clean cigar to any reputable man who will advance one sound excuse for the City Council’s existence. What would we lose if it were abolished tomorrow? What is its actual value to Baltimore? And how is that value demonstrated?

Freight observed at 10.30 o’clock last Friday morning on the rear platform of a Curtis Bay car:

A coil of rope. A block. A sailor’s kit-bag. A large can of oil. A basket of groceries. A suitcase. A gunnysack of potatoes. A small empty basket.

Two witnesses stand ready to offer affidavits that this list is accurate. Other lists sent in by kind friends:

No. 1 A large bag of live crabs. A section of terra cotta pipe a foot in diameter and three feet long. A flower pot full of leaf mold.

No. 2. Two baskets of family wash (dirty). Four pairs of old shoes looped on a string. A large demijohn of whisky.

No. 3. A seltzer siphon (charged). A large can of lard. A large, round box of cheese.

No. 4. A stepladder. A bird cage with two parrots in it. A large framed oleograph showing a negro regiment assaulting San Juan Hill. A small keg of sardellen.

No. 5. A six-foot section of a galvanized iron cornice. Two bundles of shingles. A carpenter’s tool chest. A coil of insulated wire. An empty fish basket, radiating a scent as of Araby.

Contributions to the new dictionary of incurable maladies:

Hookesis—An abnormal sensitiveness to psychic stimuli. Prominentbaltimoreanitis—Malignant respectability.

New novels that you may read without loss of self-respect:

“Jennie Gerhardt,” by Theodre Dresier, “Hilda Lessways,” by Arnold Bennett. “Rebellion,” by Joseph Medill Patterson “Ethan Frome,” by Edith Wharton.

And don’t overlook “Abe and Mawruss,” the new collection of Potash and Perlmutter stories, by Montague Glass. Potash and Perlmutter, all things considered, are probably the best comic characters set before us since Kipling created the immortal Terence Mulvaney. They have the breath of life in them; they are real. And so are the minor personages who furnish the background for them—Henry D. Feldman, the great lawyer; Felix Geigermann, the musical storekeeper; One-Eye Feigenbaum and Bertha, his bride; Leon Sammet, Moe Griesman, Miss Cohen, all the rest.

In this new collection Mr. Glass presents a dozen of his stories, including that about Abe Potash’s trip to Paris, that about Geigermann and the fake Amati violin, and that about Simonetti, the Italian designer. The greatest of all the Potash and Perlmutter tales, however, is not in the book, nor was it in the preceding volume. I mean the story of One-Eye Feigenbaum and Bertha of the mustache. How many better comic stories are in English! Not a dozen, I am sure. You must go to “The Taking of Lungtungpen” and Chester Bailey Fernald’s “The Spirit in the Pipe” to find the peer of this one.

A copy of Plutarch’s Lives to anyone who will bring forward proofs of any “unfair misrepresentation” of the Hon. Richard J. Biggs, the public man, in any Baltimore newspaper during the last 60 years.