Baltimore Evening Sun (13 December 1911): 6.

Office of
THE GENERAL MANAGER.
Hell, December 12th, 1911.

The Hon. H. L. Mencken, care The Evening Sunpaper, Baltimore, Md.:

My Dear Henry–Your letter of yesterday, inclosing the clippings from the Sunpaper, reached me this morning. My very best thanks for it. Needless to say, I am delighted to hear that Baltimore is to have another campaign for the enforcement of the Blue Laws, particularly since this one is supported by many gentlemen of undoubted probity and large influence, and so promises to be more or less successful. If you can manage, without attracting attention, to slip in a subscription for me, I shall promptly forward my check to cover it. Better credit it to “Cash” or “A. B. C.” and make it about $10. If it’s larger, it will cause too much gossup. I trust to your discretion in this delicate matter.

As you well I know, I have long viewed with alarm the growing liberality of the Baltimore Sabbath, and if that alarm has been selfish, I can at least plead that it has also been very sincere. In particular, the Sunday concerts at Druid Hill Park, on Sunday afternoons in summer, have given me uneasiness. They seem to attract, year after year, larger and larger crowds. Well, the withdrawal of those crowds from what one may call the normal sedentary debaucheries of a Baltimore Sunday makes serious inroads into my business, and so I am against it.

I send 20 of my beat inspectors to Druid Hill whenever the band plays on Sunday, but they seldom come back with any reports worth entering on my books. Five or six hundred young jackasses caught smoking cigarettes, a few score caught kissing their best girls behind oak trees-and that’s about all. The business doesn’t pay me. In self-defense I have had to make a rule excluding all cigarette smokers until they have done their 20,000 boxes, and all calf-love osculators, no matter what their records. I can’t afford to have the notion set around that going to Hell is child’s play.

I have always feared that these Sunday concerts in summer might pave the way for Sunday “sacred” concerts in winter–i. e., for vaudeville shows disguised as concerts. The Police Board, I have reason to suspect, has been in favor of such an extension. It authorized the concert to raise funds for the Fifth Regiment’s frolic in Atlanta–a frolic, by the way, regarding which I have received interesting reports--and it has lately authorized a number of other concerts, under the auspices of various pseudo-charitable organizations. That sort of thing, as you well know, might easily get beyond bounds, and do a lot of damage to my business. Therefore, I rejoice to see a strong organization formed to combat it.

What I really want, of course, is the old-time Baltimore Sunday, with everything tightly closed save the side-door saloons and disorderly houses. It is in such places that I really do trade, and so I am opposed to everything that will lessen their patronage. In that category I reckon Sunday concerts, Sunday golf, Sunday walks in the country, Sunday card parties, Sunday trolley rides, Sunday moving-picture shows, Sunday theatres, Sunday organ recitals at the Peabody, the Sunday opening of the art galleries and libraries, the Sunday sale of soda water and candy, and the damnable custom of reading novels on Sunday, so eloquently denounced by one of the orators at the recent McCoy Hall meeting, as I see in the Sunpaper.

Such things must and shall be stopped, if Baltimore is to keep up its old representation in Hell. I look back to the last virulent enforcement of the Blue Laws, 10 or 11 years ago, with a sentimental longing for an encore. At that time, as you know, for you were a reporter then and had your eye on the town, the Baltimore Sabbath kept my inspectors busy and gave me unmixed delight. All decent forms of amusement were rigorously prohibited by the constabulary. Candy stores and soda fountains were ruthlessly raided. The delicatessen dealers of East Baltimore street were pinched by the score. Even the sale of Sunday newspapers was forbidden. As for giving a concert or a dance on Sunday, it was unthinkable.

Well, the result was enormous prosperity for the side-door saloons and disorderly houses. The former were packed from dawn to dark; the latter were so prosperous that they multiplied enoromously. The two together offered the only visible hospitality to strangers in the city. What is more, they offered the only visible public entertainment to resident young men. It was a poor Sunday, in those days, when I didn’t gobble a couple of hundred recruits. Drunkards were being manufactured faster than I could put down their names. The police, busy with their chase of soda clerks, delicatessen dealers and newsboys, had no time to devote to the Red Light district, and so the red lights burned brightly. I grow mushily sentimental whenever I think of it. Eheu fugaces! But don’t get the notion that I am a pessimist, a croaker! Far from it! The truth is that my business in Baltimore, even in the face of the park concerts and other such scandalous inventions, has always been good. My inspectors all know that the place to hunt for trade is in a moral town. Well, Baltimore is a moral town. The Baltimore Sunday, for all the efforts of the Sabbath-breakers, is still beautifully depressing. And the consequence is that the good old custom of getting drunk every Saturday night and of sleeping all day Sunday still flourishes in your midst. Every Sunday morning, when I go over the weekly souse reports, I notice the name of Baltimore over and over again. Once, out of curiosity, I had my chief clerk tabulute the reports for one Saturday night. They showed 37,760 drunks in Baltimore alone, not counting in Highlandstown, Woodberry or Sparrows Point. Not so bad. you must admit.

Room remains, however, for improvement. The thing to do is to stamp out all competition. Those Sunday organ recitals at the Peabody give me constant uneasiness. In the first place, they attract a lot of people who might otherwise spend Sunday reading novels, playing poker or beating their children, and, in the second place, they pave the way for Sunday orchestral concerts. From Sunday orchestral concerts, kind fates, deliver me! I frankly fear them. Imagine a band playing in each of Baltimore’s 17 theatres every Sunday afternoon and evening! No more solitary boozing in hotel rooms! No more crowding into side-door bars! No more gay doings under the red lights! I shiver whenever I tkink of it!

Well, my letter grows overlong, and so I must chop it off. In closing, my dear Henry, I sincerely hope that you will do whatever you can to help the proposed enforcement of the Blue Laws.

Meanwhile, my best wishes for your health and prosperity, and my regards to all the boys.
Faithfully yours,
Nicholas Satan. Dict. N. S.–M. R.