Baltimore Evening Sun (8 December 1911): 6.

Boil your drinking water! Pay your taxes, your super-taxes, your sur-taxes, your special assessments, your water-rent! And then, if you have anything left, do your Christmas shopping early!

New and awe-inspiring feats for a super-herculean Hercules:

1. To look at a Baltimore tax bill without swearing.

To think of the City Council without blushing.

VOX POPULI

Them boomers keep on booming day and night, but so far nobody ain’t heard nothing about no one getting more wages than he usen’t.

A rare opportunity for the military moralists of Baltimore will soon present itself. The Hon. Mikail Mordkin, the Russian dancer, is booked for next Thursday night, December 14, at the Lyric—and the report goes forth that he will dance with bare legs! It is bad enough to dance at all—the act itself, as everyone knows, is indecent and degrading, if not downright mortal sin—but to dance with legs bare is obviously worse. Will Baltimore submit to this outrage? Will our connoisseurs of immorality stand idly by while this awful Russian cavorts before a refined audience with his knees exposed—and not only his knees, but also his ankles, his calves, his shins?

Let us hope not! Baltimore is, and has been for many years, an intensely moral town—perhaps the most moral town in all the world. Upon this high level of virtue, our heads bulging the floor of Heaven, we must and shall maintain ourselves. Through all the past our alert police, aided by a noble band of volunteers, have done yeoman service. When the unspeakable play of “The Easiest Way” was presented here, with its gross doctrine that some women are not chemically pure, the officer on the beat very properly ordered that changes be made forthwith. And when “The Girl From Rector’s” was put on view, with its staggering suggestion that women carry money in their stockings, two intelligent sergeants rushed up at the double to inspect it, and their orders for a general sterilization were carried out. So with “Alma, Wo Wohnst Du?” that Bavarian garbage. So with “The Girl in the Taxi.” So with many anothor such piece. In each case denunciation followed inspection, and sterilization was hot upon denunciation’s heels.

Are we now going to permit this scandalous Russian to insult us with his exhibition—to shake his bare legs before us, to rattle his knees together, to expose the razor-edges of his shins? A million times no! We must protect our youth from such scenes. We must save innocence from such debaucheries. Let the Hon. M. Mordkin, if he would escape the calaboose, the ducking stool and the major excommunication, incase those locomotive filaments of his in a pair of ready-made pantaloons, elegantly creased. Or, failing that, let him drape them with Persian rugs, or wrap them in tar paper—or dance in a barrel! The proprieties, the decencies, the moralities, especially the baltimoralities, must be preserved at all costs. We are a virtuous people.

In Detroit, the other day, when the Hon. M. Mordkin essayed to prance upon the stage lacking the southern half of his lingerie, the police quickly closed in upon him and made him put on tights. The Hon. M. Mordkin, it appears, had no tights in his pocket; it took 45 minutes to find a pair that would fit him. But not until he had them on would the Detroit constables permit him to cavort. Certainly our own police are not going to allow their Detroit brethren to outdo them. We have here, constantly under arms, a squad of constabulary moralists of the highest talent. It is composed entirely of virtuosi. The worst man in it can smell impropriety at 200 yards, even with the wind against him. The best, a sergeant of 34 years’ practice, is a brother to the man who edited the expurgated edition of the Elsie books.

Sound the four threes! Let the squad come sliding down the pole! There is work afoot for moralists, in and out of uniform! Bring up the bloodhounds! Roll the drum!

Tips for the Maryland Anti-Vivisectionu Society, the estimable, the ardent:

Dr. Simon Flexner has just admitted, under severe cross-examination, that his meningitis serum will not cure eczema. Prof. Dr. Paul Ehrlich has just declined in trembling the challenge of the British Anti-Vivisection Society, which offered him $10,000 if he would agree to take 30 doses of salvarsan in 30 days.

Psychotherapy is a scheme of healing based upon the sound theory that the patient is probably a bit bughouse.

Two books of short stories that rise far above the common level:

“The Indian Lily,” by Hermann Sudermann. “The Man Who Understood Women,” by Leonard Merrick.

Contributions toward a roster of the 20 greatest Baltimoreans, living or dead:

The Hon. Jake Hook. The Hon. Bernard J. Lee. The Hon. Harry W. Nice. The Hon. Mahoni Amicus.

A first-class five-cent cigar to the Hon. Henry J. McMains for each and every name of an allopath who belongs to the League for Medical “Freedom”—and will admit it in writing.

Down goes the tax rate! Ha, ha! Up goes the death rate! He, he!

The three leading learned profession in Baltimore, in the order of their lucrativeness:

1. Embalming.
2. Booming.
3.Rabble-rousing.