Free Lance $flserial (0198/1911-11-21)

Baltimore Evening Sun (21 November 1911): 6.

THE FREE LANCE

Only 1,274 days more! Eheu fugaces, Postume, Postume, labuntur anni. * * *

Stenographic report of the comment of the Hon. the super-Mahon upon the result, to date, of the recount of the May ballots:

HAR! HAR! HAR!

To which the princes of the blood responded in antiphon:

har-har-har-har-har-har-har-har-har-har-har-har-har-har-har-har-har-har-har-har-har-har-har-har-har-har-har-har-har-har-har-har-har-har-har-har-har-har-har-har-har-har-har-har-har-har-har-har-har-har-har-har-har-har-har-har-har-har-har-har-har-har-har-har

Har! Har! Har! HAR! Har! Har! Har! HAR! Har! Har! Har! HAR! Har! Har! Har! HAR! Har! Har! Har! HAR! Har! Har! Har! HAR! Har! Har! Har! HAR! Har! Har! Har! HAR! Har! Har! Har! HAR! Har! Har! Har! HAR! Har! Har! Har! HAR! Har! Har! Har! HAR! Har! Har! Har! HAR! Har! Har! Har! HAR! Har! Har! Har! HAR! Har! Har! Har! HAR!

The Hon. Bernard N. Baker seems a bit vague as to just what the banditti of big business did to his scheme for a Panama steamship line. Perhaps the actual operation was not unlike that performed by the Merchants and Manufacturers’ Association upon the Hon. Joseph C. Whitney’s scheme for establishing exhibitions of Baltimore products in the South. That operation, it will be recalled, involved three stages. viz:

the removal of the liver and lights.
the deposit at a cake of ice in the cavity.
the burial at the corpse.

BLACK HAND NOTICE

My spies have just brought me a list of the Prominent Baltimoreans who were willing to serve on the Citizens’ Relief Committee, but didn’t get the chance. Unless I receive a bribe of $1 by 1 P. M. tomorrow, I shall print the list.

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

Even money that the Hon. James Harry Preston will he renominated and re-elected in 1915. 40 to 1 that the new charter of the Red Cross Committee, if it is ever introduced in the Legislature, will never emerge from the Committee on Hospital and Asylums.

Modest contributions toward a dictionary of journalese:

Restaurateur, n., Any saloonkeeper who wears his Sunday clothes during the week.
Prominent, adj., Willing to be chronically misquoted in return for the publicity.
Well-known, adj., A term of compliment applied to a man when every other customary term of compliment is prohibited by the obvious facts.
H----l, n., A place where Sunday laws are actually enforced.
Enthusiasm, n., The drunken bellowing of ward heelers.
Shock, n., The sigh of relief with which the community greets the news that another Prominent Citizen is no more.
Leader, n., Any politician who is influential enough to get his old mother a job as a charwoman.
Beautiful, adj., Any woman not patently hideous.
Charming, adj., Any woman not measuring up to the requirements of beautiful.

Further contributions to the new dictionary of American synonyms for paunch:

Hall Glacis Corporation Pansiere

From a moralist characteristically ignorant of human psychology:

No more of the synonyms for paunch! Vulgarity is the most offensive of all things. It is the very antithesis of humor.

What nonsense! The plain fact, of course, is that vulgarity is the very essence of humor, the heart’s blood and lymphatic juice of humor. The one and the other are but facets of the same jewel. They are founded alike upon painful incongruity, upon the disconcerting collocation of opposing ideas—for instance, the idea of privacy and the idea of publicity, the idea of dignity and the idea of utter lack of dignity. The best jokes are vulgar jokes. The very best are usually downright indecent. It has been so since the day of Aristophanes, and it will be so forevermore.

I once know a man who essayed to collect for publication the 50 best limericks in English. He had to give up the enterprise because 30 of the 50 were vulgar and half of the remainder were indecent. He showed me some of the former. They were vulgar, beyond question, but they were also indubitably and uproariously funny–almost as funny, indeed, as certain chapters of Francois Rabelais, that great master of charming vulgarity. Said this man:

I, personally, enjoy all of these excellent limericks, and so do you. So would any other sane man. And yet I am afraid to print them. Why? Simply because the universal human enjoyment of vulgarity is accompanied by a universal human refusal to admit it. My book would sell by the thousand–but the law would jail me. Imagine how the jury would laugh if these limericks were read aloud in court–the jury and the judge, the bailiffs and the bums. And yet that same jury would find me guilty of a gross offense against morals and that same judge would sentence me to 50 or 60 years in the chain-gang.

Oh, the hypocrisy of man! Such a thing as a joke involving no invasion of dignity, of modesty, of vanity, of decency–in brief, of some one or other of the things which stand in opposition to vulgarity–is utterly unknown. Perhaps it is not only unknown, but also unimaginable. And yet we all profess to hold vulgarity in abhorrence!

An anti-vivisectionist is one who gags at a guinea pig and swallows a baby.

The American language, so loose, so liquid, so lovely:

So far nobody ain’t been sent to no jail, butr cert’ny you gotta admit a lot o’ names has been called.

Boom balloons that have gone soaring completely out of sight:

The Star-Spangled Banner Exposition. The “Sea America First” Convention.

Boil your drinking water! Dodge your taxes! Keep an eye on the Narrenhaus!

Down go taxes! Hah, hah! Hah, hah! Up go water-rents! Ho, ho! Ho, ho!

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

“George Bernard Shaw: His Life and Works,” by Archibald Henderson. “The Germans,” by J. A. R. Wylie. “The Musical Amateur,” by Robert H. Schauffler.