Baltimore Evening Sun (23 November 1911): 6.

Only 1,272 days more! And then the curtain drops, slow falling to the prompter’s bell.

The Hon. James H. Preston, though he professes (and I believe with perfect sincerity) a deep respect for the needs and yearnings of the common people, yet constantly affronts them, by addressing them in English, a tongue they neither love nor understand. On the stump, of course, he speaks American—a fluent, idiomatic and even incandescent American. But when he takes his pen in hand, it is English that flows from its point—the ornate, polyphonic, baffling English of a jurisconsult. The result, of course, cannot fail to be discomfort among his followers. They know that he is saying something, but they don’t know what he is saying.

For instance, consider his late communication to the City Council upon the proposal to change the hue of School No. 100—a communication addressed to the people in general, as well as to the intellectual giants of the Council. An excellent state paper, without a doubt, and one exhibiting courage and sense—but still a state paper written in English, and hence incomprehensible to the monolingual American. Let me step forward as a journalist—as a journalist exercising the highest, i. e., the interpretative, function of his art—and attempt a translation into the vulgate, that all may read and understand. First come the essential strophes of the original text, now spread upon the tablets of the Council:

I am deeply sympathetic with the position which the people in this neighborhood occupy, and the injury to their property which is being sustained by reason of proximity to School No. 100. It was a mistake, in my judgment, to have established the school at Mount and Saratoga streets. * * * But the best interests of the community will be served by educating the colored children. That is an obligation devolving upon the white public of the city. And no other school can be secured for the colored children that would not cause more opposition than has developed regarding School No. 100. The removal of School No. 100 would leave vacant a building which cost $73,000 and which we could have no possible use for, inasmuch as the white schools in the immediate neighborhood are themselves not full. If at some future time I can make arrangements which will remove the condition without simply transferring it to another neighborhood, where the same objections would be raised, I will do so. If I were to consult my individual feelings and inclinations, I would sign the ordinance, but, from consideration of public duty I am compelled to deal with this question in the manner best calculated to render substantial justice to all the people.

And now the free, the fluent, the graceful rendering into the vulgate:

Them people out in the West End have a good kick coming. I give them right. That nigger school on the corner won’t help them none when they go to work and try to sell their houses. Whoever opened it there done wrong. * * * But all the same we can’t turn the little dinkles loose. They ought to get some chance to learn their A B C’s, somewheres or other. We have a right to hire school teachers to learn them and to put up a schoolhouse for them to learn them in. Well, where else are you going to move School No. 100 if you take it away from where it is at? No matter where you put it, you would hear kicks. Besides, it you turned the coons out, you would have an empty schoolhouse on your hands—and $73,000 in good money laying idle. We don’t need no more white schools out that-away, and so, if we turned the dinkies out, the schoolhouse would stand there with nothing in it. Later on I may strike some way to get around the thing without starting up a kick somewheres else. If I ever think of such an ideer I’[ll try it out without no hemming or hawing. If I could just go ahead and do what I want to do, I would sign that ordinance right away, but a Mayor has lot to think of what would be best for everybody, and if I done it now I would get into hot water in some other neighborhood. So the only thing for me to do to hold off. Thanking you one and all, I remain yours very truly.

Incidentally, the foes and critics of the Hon. Mr. Preston may study with profit his whole conduct in this matter of School No. 100. The absurd plan of moving a colored school out of a fast-coloring neighborhood to make room for a white school that never will be needed was heartily supported by public opinion. The City Councilman from the ward was ardently in favor of it, all the organization ward workers were in favor of it, and it was approved triumphantly by both branches of the Council. And yet the Mayor had the courage to veto it, and, what is more, to defend his veto, openly and without apology.

The quality thus revealed is one not noted in any other Mayor of Baltimore since the time of the Hon. Thomas G. Hayes, and hence it may be well to view it with considerable satisfaction, however grotesque its occasional manifestations. The Hon. Mr. Preston, like the Hon. Mr. Hayes, is a man of violent determination. Opposition never daunts him. He has his own way. He asks no man’s let or leave. Encompassed roudn by men vastly his inferior—many of them sycophants, most of the others asses—he knocks them about like ninepins. Combative to the core, he is never so happy as when tackling an enemy, real or imaginary.

Such a man, of course, can do a lot of damage. The sheer exhilaration of combat is apt to blind him to the possible merits of the other fellow’s cause. But when he is on the right side (which is oftener, perhaps, than many of his critics are willing to grant), his qualities make for very good service, indeed. He has assertive masculinity, a rough sort of courage, an engaging frankness. He has no false delicacies. He is not an apologist.

The osseocapital objection to the curse of vansicklism, obscurely expressed:

Nix macht Mann so boss’ als wenn Mann Hame kommt und mued ist und muss Englisch schwetze’.

The Voice of the People, as the ammoniacal vapors bring it in:

The more they try to count Preston out, the more they count him in. It don’t seem like Mr. Joesting is saying nothing no more.

Meanwhile, it would probably be going too far to say that the spectacle of the Hon. Daniel Joseph Loden, J., holding two jobs at once warms the cardiac cockles of those gladiators who yet struggle vainly for one apiece.

A celluloid collar to anyone who will advance one intelligible reason, not fancifully exegetical, why the reasonable use of profanity—to wit, the words h——l and d——n and their derivatives—should be held immoral and indecent.

A dose of cyanide of potassium to anyone who will advance one intelligible reason, not obviously satifical, why the use of cigarettes by women should be held unwomanly and degrading.

A box of liver pills to anyone who will advance one intelligible reason, not grounded frankly upon the theory that women are not human, why women shouldn’t vote.