Baltimore Evening Sun (3 November 1911): 6.

THE FREE LANCE

Only 1,296 days more! And maybe only 552! Who can tell?

Some of the wizards who prophesied last spring that the super-Mahon would make a good Mayor:

The Hon. Francis K. Carey.
The Hon. Eugene O’Dunne.
The Hon. J. Charles Linthicum.
The Hon. Peter J. Campbell.
The Hon. S. S. Field.
The Hon. Robert H. Carr.
[To be continued.]

TODAY’S BEST BETS

  1. The Hon. Robert H. Carr’s affecting martyrdom will elect him by 2,000 votes.
  2. The Hon. J. Albert Hughes will be elected.
  3. Of the 60-odd candidates for Delegate from Baltimore, the 24 worst will be elected.

      4. The Red Cross Committee, it appears, favors a City Council of 14 members. Twelve of those members will represent two wards each and will be chosen by the ward bosses, as at present. Without power or responsibility, they will have to devote their whole time to making asses of themselves. Once a week they will meet in all solemnity and “discuss” public problems in various unearthly dialects of the American language and with a steady flow of imbecility. The cost of the circus will be about $30,000 a year–a cent on the tax rate. An excellent plan. A subtle, sapient plan.

      The Maryland Anti-Vivisection Society, that camorra of sentimental dialectictans, is after me again. On September 7, after a week’s jousting with its gladiators, I put four plain questions to it, and declined to engage in any further controversy until it had answered these questions “in a simple and straightforward manner, without any evasion or clouding of the issue.” Silence. For seven long weeks, while summer faded and autumn painted the hillsides with its myriad chromes, the great minds of the society were in incessant function, secreting its devastating reply. A few days ago that awful counterblast, that logical death-warrant, reached me.

      Unfortunately I am unable to report that it meets the conditions I laid down. The ancient anti-vivisectionist devices of begging the question, of dragging a herring across the trail, of offering faith as evidence, of boldly denying plain facts appear in it in full flower. In reply to my inquiry why the society suppressed a material passage in Dr. Berkley’s famous Bayview report it brazenly disputes that the passage was important or that the suppression was unfair. In reply to my criticism of its bogus medical authorities, it simply brings forward more bogus authorities. In reply to my request for proof that the dipththeria antitoxin is not “a valuable therapeutic” (i e., curative) agent, it offers majestic proofs that the antitoxin is not a valuable prophylactic (i. e., preventive) agent. And so on, and so on.

      The result, of course, is that further discussion of the matters at issue becomes difficult, if not impossible. The Maryland Anti-Vivisection Society thinks that it treated Dr. Berkley justly, or, to use its own word, “gently”; I think that it treated him abominably. The Maryland Anti-Vivisection Society thinks that the Rev. A. Todd Ferrier, author of the theory that dogs have souls, is a man worth hearing and heeding; I think that he is a tedious and boomerous ass. The Maryland Anti-Vivisection Society thinks that Harndall and Spooner, the horse doctors; Oldfield, the “fruitarian”; Gordon Stables, the fourth-rate novelist; Wilkinson, the occultist, and Arabella Kenealy, the author of “Some Men are Such Gentlemen,” are “eminent physicians and high authorities”; I know that they are nothing of the sort. In brief, an irreconcilable difference of opinion persists. The Maryland Anti-Vivisection Society’s definition of truth diffors hopelessly from mine, just as its definitions of fairness, of justice, of common sense differ from mine. And so I leave it to its jehad, with polite but insincere assurances of my distinguished consideration.

      Some learned and earnest fellow sends in a request that the following “model and bullet-proof” divorce law be embalmed in type:

      AN ACT to repeal Section 36 of Article 16 of the Code of Public General Laws of Maryland, entitled “Chancery,” subtitle “Divorce,” and to re-enact the said section with amendments.

      Section 1. Be it enacted by the General Assembly of Maryland, That Section 36 of Article 16 of the Code of Public General Laws, entitled “Chancery,” subtitle “Divorce,” be and the same is hereby repealed and re-enacted so as to read as follows: 36. Upon the hearing of any bill for a divorce, the Court may decree a divorce a vinculo matrimonii whenever it shall be established, by competent testimony, that the parties to the action have lived apart, and not as man and wife, for a period of at least three years next preceding the date of the application for such divorce, whether by the wish and act of one party alone or of both of them.

      36a. No other cause or causes shall be sufficient for the grant of a divorce a vinculo matrimonii, nor shalll it be lawful for any court of equity or referee, in the course of a hearing of an application for a divorce a vinculo matrimonii, to admit any evidence as to the conduct of either of the parties, either before or during the period of separation provided for in Section 36, nor any evidence as to the financial arrangements or transactions between the parties before or during the said period of separation, nor any other evidence tending to explain or account for the said separation, or the causes thereof.

      36b. After a divorce a vinculo matrimonii has been granted by the terms of Sections 36 and 36a. of this Article, it shall be unlawful for either party to the action, whether plaintiff or defendant, to marry either the other party or any other person during the period of five years next following.

      36c. Nothing in this Act shall be accepted as repealing or amending Sections 14 and 15 of Article 16 of the Public General Laws, entitled “Chancery,” subtitle “Alimony,” or Sections 35, 37, 38 and 39 of Article 16 of the Public General Laws, entitled “Chancery,” subtitle “Divorce.”

      Section 2. And be it further enacted, That this Act shall take effect from the date of its passage.

      With the above draft of the proposed law came the following note:

      Here is that long-sought thing–a perfect divorce law. It puts an end to all scandals. It gives every aggrieved person a chance to make a dignified escape. It discourages quick divorce. It breaks up the habit of electing Husband No. 2 before getting rid of Husband No. 1. It makes perjury, which now constitutes 99 per cent. of all divorce court testimony, unnecessary. It puts logic and justice and a reasonable decency into a business which must now disgust every civilized human being. I have submitted it to fully a score of reflective persons, and the only objections I have heard have been purely theological ones. Thanking you kindly, I beg to remain.

      Connoisseurs are looking forward with high expectations to the coming session of the Legislature. No matter which party wins, the city delegation will show a majority of thoroughly practical men. In brief, excellent sport is promised.