Baltimore Evening Sun (16 November 1911): 6.

Only 1,279 days more! Goodness gracious, how the time has flew!

The sale of tickets for the post-season series of games between the Baltimore, Constantinople, Rio de Janeiro and Shanghai Clubs for the typhoid championship of the world will begin January 1. The Baltimore Club has headed the National Typhoid League of America since early in the spring, save for one week, and its lead is now so large that it cannot fail to land the pennant. The Constantinople Club, in much the same way, has kept at the head of the Levantine Typhoid League, though early in the season the Port Said and Odessa Clubs threatened to give it hard tussles. The Rio de Janeiro Club is champion of the Latin-American League and the Shanghai Club is champion of the Asiatic League. In Asia typhoid is a sport of recent introduction, and the common people still prefer bubonic plague and beriberi, but the Shanghai Club this year has shown very good form. There seems to be little doubt, however, that the Orioles will win the terrestrial pennant.

Once more the so-called independent newspapers wallop the Hon. the super-Mahon, this time because of his appointment of the Hon. Bernard J. Lee, the Tenth ward statesman, to the high post of warden of the City Jail. Once more, in brief, the Hon. the super-Mahon is reviled and castigated for doing the very thing he promised to do, on his faith and honor as a man, during his vernal canvass for votes.

The Hon. Mr. Lee, to be sure, is no scholard. The difference between “will” and “shall” is not stated in his bright lexicon. He has never heard of the theory of least squares; he is innocent of prosody and psychology, the nebular hypothesis and the doctrines of the Angelic Doctor; he believes, perhaps, that the humerus is a low form of wit. But what has all this got to do with his appointment to the City Hail, vice Hook, hooked? It is obviously no aim of an Old-Fashioned Administration to measure the intellectual kick of job-seekers, to put philosophers into office. Its actual aim is exactly the contrary. What it seeks to do, beyond all other things, is to keep philosophers out of office. And in giving a job to Bernie it has made an appreciable move in that direction.

If you forget all this, you fall quickly into foul misjudgment of the Hon. the super-Mahon. He is, as I have ofen pointed out in his defense, one of the few genuine democrats yet alive on earth. He thoroughly believes that the common people have a right to rule, that their notions and desires, however absurd–the more so, indeed, the more absurd–deserve to be heard and heeded. It was upon this platform that he solicited votes last spring. It is upon this platform that he was elected, and it is upon this platform that he now governs us. He may be wrong at times--I know a number of pefectly sane persons who hold that he is; but is certainly ridiculous to allege that he is also unfaithful. Unfaithful to what? To whom? Plainly not to the honest fellows who elected him. To them he is eternally, courageously, insatiably faithful. No more faithful, no more honest man was ever Mayor of this town. No man in public office ever carried out his campaign pledges with more desperate assiduity.

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And yet–this constant kicking, this endless criticism! He is belabored, for instance, for bossing the distribution of jobs. It is argued that, after appointing the heads of departments, he should take no further interest in the busituess. What rot! Imagine any intelligent man turning over so important a matter–the most important, perhaps, of all matters--to such fellows as now head the departments! But why did he appoint such fellows? Because he was pledged to do it--because he was pledged to bounce every last Finney and Numsen. And now, having bounced them, and having filled their places, as he promised, with fourth, fifth and tenth raters–now, perforce, he must supply from his own store the sagacity which those tenth raters lack.

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As for the Hon. Mr. Lee, he promises to administer the affairs of the jail in a highly efficient and old-fashioned manner. The immoral Sunpaper made him say this morning that he had decided to imitate John Weyler--that, once in office, he would Don’t fear, dear hearts! Bernie, for all his spoofing, is not that sort of a turncoat. He sticks to those who have stuck to him. He will enter upon his duties and honors, on January 15, not as a reformer, a traitor, a scoundrel of “shifting allegiance,” but as a professional politician–and a professional politician he will remain until fate yanks him from the trough. If, by any chance, he ever appoints a single deputy who is not of his own lodge, on that day I shall eat a cobblestone. Have no doubts about Bernie. When it comes to orthodoxy, he is of carborundum.

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Meanwhile, the connoisseur may lament, pianissimo, the waste of such a man upon such a job. Only his necessities, you may be sure, headed him jailward. The income of a motorman is not sufficient to put him beyond sordid considerations. The Jail Warden gets $2,000 a year, a free house and a free staff of captive servitors. A School Commissioner gets nothing but free reading notices. Here, perhaps, we detect the causes behind the Hon. Mr. Lee’s choice of a job. Destiny plainly headed him for the School Board–he is, taking him all in all, the most perfect old-fashioned School Commissioner imaginable–but the harsh demands of his exchequer shunted him off to the Tombs. A straightforward, upstanding, unblushing man. Let us wish him well.

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At the banquet of the General Alumni Association of the University of Maryland last Monday night (the scene being the main eating room of the Rennert) there were seven toasts on the coard, and below each of them appeared a few lines from the Rubaiyat. One of these toasts was to “Opportunity,” and its accompanying strophe ran thus:

Open now the door! You know how little while we have to stay, And once departed, may return no more.

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And who was told off to respond to this toast, to expound this depressing slice of old Omar? None other than the Hon. James Harry Preston, temporarily Mayor of Baltimore! You have the gruesome fact: now read the strophe again.

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After all, the bagging of the ballots may yet reveal a high usefulness. For one thing, it will afford the Hon. Phillips Lee Goldsborough a fine opportunity, while he is yet fresh in office, to show whether his campaign promises of good government were sincere or not sincere. The answer will appear clearly in his attitude toard the Hon. Harry W. Nice. Will he reward Harry or forget Harry? Let us wait and watch.