Baltimore Evening Sun (13 November 1911): 6.

Only 1,283 days more! Oyez, oyez; all ye who have business before the old-fashioned Administration draw nigh yahr!

The desirability of having eminent business men in public office, that their highly developed and almost uncanny commercial sagacity may stand guard over the public treasury, and, in particular, prevent raids upon it by grafters, is once more affectingly demonstrated. Certainly it is lamentable that the city government of Baltimore cannot be managed as skillfully and as prudently as some of the banks of Baltimore.

The Hon. Charles H. Carter to the Editor of The Sun:

At the time Mr. Hubbert took the action above mentioned [the bagging of the Preston-Mahool ballots] I was out of the State of Maryland * * *

A retreat very frequently made by the Prominent Baltimorean in office when the work for which he is paid is to be done.

Why doesn’t some enterprising fellow publish a guide for Baltimore’s hugh brigade of Sunday drinkers? In fully 40 hospitable and comfortable places in this town it is possible to get a drink on Sunday, but in every one the getting of that drink must be preceded by certain formal ceremonies–and in no two places are the ceremonies exactly alike. The result is the confusion and exasperation of the drinking classes–a cruel and useless business.

In one Baltimore hotel, for example, the rule is that any man who writes his name on the register may get as many drinks as he pleases, and may buy as many as he pleases for his guests. In another he may buy for himself, but not for his guests. In yet another he may not buy at all, even for himself alone, unless he also orders a cooked meal. In a fourth he must buy a cooked meal–and is strictly limited to two drinks. In a fifth, one cooked meal will suffice for two, or even three, four, six, ten or twenty drinkers—but everyone in the congress must register individually.

Further confusion is caused by varying definitions of “cooked meal.” In two or three hotels it means a meal of hot food; to others it means any meal of cooked food, however remote the cooking. In half a dozen places an ordinary sandwich, say of ham, cheese or sardines, is not regarded as a meal, but a club sandwich is. In others an order of raw oysters is a meal, though the oysters are not cooked. In yet others any food costing more than 25 cents, whatever its character, is called a meal.

An acquaintance of mine, a few Sundays ago went into a hotel which enforces the rule that no man may get a drink on Sunday without registering and ordering a meal, and that no man, even upon so registering, may have more than one drink. My acquaintance asked for a decision regarding the maximum lawful size of a drink. The waiter appealed to the head waiter, and the latter said that no such decision was on the books. “Then make it now,” said my acquaintance. “I want one drink of Pilsener. But I want a big one. Give me half a gallon in a pitcher.” The head watter, his eyes bulging, consulted the manager–and in a few minutes in came the pitcher. Two blocks farther on another head waiter decided that a drink meant no more than a bottle–but that any registered guest might have as many as he wanted, up to the vanishing point of autonomous locomotion.

Such variations and discrepancies confuse and annoy the Sunday drinker. There should be a pocket manual for his guidance–a little book giving a list of all hotels and kaifs which sell on Sunday and a digest of their house rules. The Liquor License Board, if it had any enterprise, would issue such a book. In the face of its sloth, the way is open for some private pundit.

The latest recruit to the Hon. the Sob Squad:

The ex-Hon. Arthur Pue Gorman, Jr.

From bad losers, and loud church bells, and “fair” newspapers, and the key of H moll, and sweet potato pie, and cold dinner plates, and the young of the human species, and the works of Mrs. Humphry Ward, and the theory that the advocacy of public comfort stations is indecent—kind fates, deliver us!

The Voice of the People as the ammonia fumes waft it in:

Wasn’t that a good one to put over them there grand jurymen! Now the only thing to do to is dismiss them indictments and have it over with.

Wanted—Twenty Prominent Baltimoreans, to serve on the Orthodox Charter Commission. Also a few good places for Leading Lawyers and Well-Known Business Men. Easy work; plenty of publicity. Apply to J. H. P., Room 1, second floor, Rathhaus.

The Hon. Charles H. Carter to the Hon. the Sunpaper:

The reason heretofore stated to the Court for postponing the communication to it of the removal of the ballots show that the board acted wisely in its action.

Not so much wisely, esteemed sir, as too well!

Tips for the Maryland Anti-Vivisection Society:

At Bayview Asylum a young doctor named Ajax Googan is experimenting with paupers to determine the maximum of alcoholic capacity of a human being. One of the paupers is now being forced to drink eight quarts of champagne a day. The man’s sufferings are heartrending, though he himself is not aware of them. At the Johns Hopkins Medicl School yesterday, Drs. E. Moll and A. Dur ran 600 dachshunds through a wash-ringer. At the same place a professor whose name is not yet determined gouged out the eye of a hyena with a shoe horn.

The diagnosis of one brooding aloud upon present discontents:

What Baltimore needs is less idle talk and more intelligent action.

Well, then, why not begin by drowning a Prominent Baltimorean every morning?

From some anonymous admirer of the boomers comes this:

Let the Great Baltimore Committee alone. It is easy enough to criticise it and make fun of it, but what’s the use of doing that? You have no intelligible, constructive scheme of your own to offer.

True enough, but has the Greatest Baltimore Committee? If so, what is it?

Myspies inform me that a hen laid an egg on the platform of a crowded Linden avenue car the other morning. Well, well, don’t repine! At least the egg was fresh. Very few of the fish-baskets are.

Freight noted of late by various kinds contributors:

A jug of molasses. A plasterer’s outfit, heavy with mortar. A butcher’s basket full of calf livers. A sack of fertilizer. Six chickens tied together by the ankles. A large can of lard.