Baltimore Evening Sun (1 January 1912): 6.

The year 1911 saw the beginning of the Old-Fashtoned Administration, with its fustian and its job-juggling, its war upon intelligence and its exaltation of flatterers and non-entities. The year 1911 also saw the inauguration of organized boom-booming. God help us all in 1912!

Proposed motto and college yell for the Maryland Anti-Vivisection Society:

In the world-wide field of moral endeavor No competitor can shake a stick at us!

Lifted from “The Belle of New York,” true enough—but too lovely to die!

Corpses in the morgue of the Old-Fashioned Administration:

The Mayor’s Cabinet. The Harbor Tunnel. The Dukeland Park. The St. Paul’s Cemetery Park. The Susquehanna Water Supply. The Cram Steamship Line.

Recently interred in the populous graveyard of boomery:

The Star-Spangled Banner Exposition. The Christmas Carnival. The See-America-First Convention. The Massmeeting of Booming School Children.

From some friendly scout and connoisseur of mortality:

The Chicago Daily Tribune says that the Windy City has a typhoid epidemic. What will the boomers say when they hear it? Are the Orioles to lose the pennant?

Not on your life! The Orioles have the pennant clinched. The best Chicago can do is to have a typhoid epidemic now and then. Baltimore has had one continuously since 1885. The batting average of the Orioles, for 1911, will work out to double, if not triple, that of the Chicago club. If it doesn’t, I stand ready to walk down Baltimore street, from Paca to Gay, on the trolley wires, and to give a crayon portralt of myself, elegantly framed and autographed, to the Honorary Pallbearers.

On November 14 last, in this place, I printed a small paragraph notifying connoisseurs of balderdash of the organization of a branch bureau of the League for Medical “Freedom” in Baltimore, and announcing that it would be “a great pleasure to aid the cause * * * with a bit of discreet publicity now and then.” Three days later, on November 17, I received a letter from the Hon. Henry A. McMains, D. O., corresponding secretary of the local bureau, protesting somewhat vaguely against that notice. I quote from the letter, preserving the native charm of the honorable gentleman’s English:

The object of this association are purple of a defensive character, and are not directed against the Allopathy or any other school of medicine. Some of our most valuable members are also members of the Allopathy school, and your article is injurious to us, in that it gives a false impression of our work. We would therefore ask you kindly to make corrections accordingly.

In this paragraph were two specific statements. One was the statement that the League for Medical “Freedom” was not opposed to allopathy—i. e., to scientific medicine. The other was the statement that a number of allopaths—i. e., physicians educated in scientific medicine—were “valuable members” of the league. The first statement I knew to be wholly false in fact, if not in theory. Whatever the so-called constitution and by-laws of the league may be, the bawling of its rabble-rousers is constantly directed against the most useful agents of allopathy. But whether the second statement was true or untrue, I didn’t know, and so I offered the Hon. Mr. McMains space to print a roster of allopaths belonging to the Maryland branch, saying:

I shall also be glad, if properly informed, to print after each name the name of the college from which its bearer holds his M. D. degree and a list of his contributions to medical science. I shall also be glad to print any complimentary remarks that the Hon. Mr. McMains chooses to add, without editing or comment.

That was on November 28. Having heard nothing from the Hon. Mr. McMains, I renewed the offer on December 1. Three days later I renewed it again. On December 6 I offered the Hon. Mr. McMains a cheap but clean cigar for each and every name of an Allopath in good standing on his roll. December 8 I repeated the offer. December 9 I offered him two cigars on the same terms. December 14 I increased my bid to three cigars; December 16 to four, December 22 to five, and December 29 to six. Today I go to seven and let it stand. Every time the Hon. Mr. McMains shows me an Allopath who belongs to the League for Medical “Freedom,” Maryland branch, I stand ready to hand him seven cheap but clean cigars. Two Allopaths, 14 cigars. Three Allopaths, 21. And so on, ad infinitum.

My object here is not that of annoying the Hon. Mr. McMains, for whom I have only the highest respect, but that of finding out, for the benefit of the plain people, just who are the learned fellows behind the League for Medical “Freedom,” Maryland branch. Here is an organization which proposes to save us all from medical robbery and murder—an organization of highly moral and altruistic purposes—and yet its foremost champions, its self-sacrificing Allopaths, its heroes who place the Truth above Self, linger in distressing anonymity! Am I to conclude, against all reason, that their modesty is of even greater virulence than their love for their fellow-men? Or am I to conclude, perchance, that they have no actual existence, that they are mere creatures of the Hon. Mr. McMains’ laudable enthusiasm, benevolent bugaboos manufactured in his laboratory?

Maybe both theories are wrong. Maybe the Hon. Mr. McMains’ failure to accept my offer is to be explained on the ground that he does not smoke—there are Medical Freedomists who do not eat meat, others who do not believe in castor oil, others who hold that it is sinful to wash babies—or on the ground that he fears my cigars. In either case I come to his rescue. That is to say, I agree, after giving him the cigars, to smoke them all myself.

The betting odds in the downtown kaifs, as reported by my copper-lined todsauefer:

10 to 1 that Harry Nice is took care of. 40 to 1 that the Legislature won’t let no new charter get by what’ll do any harm to Harry Preston. 30 to 1 that there’ll be just as many jobs for the boys at Annapolis as what there was in former times.

A psychotherapieutist is one who argues that since the fireworks following a wallop in the eye are optical delusions the wallop itself is a delusion and the eye another.

A framed portrait of Anthony A. Comstock to the Lord’s Day Alliance for a clear and specific statement of its aims and program; also free space to print the said statement.

Every time a Baltimorean pays $1 in State taxes his pocket is picked of 33 cents. Laugh, suckers, laugh!