Baltimore Evening Sun (18 January 1912): 6.

Extracts from a circular issued by the Teachers’ Literary Club:

* * * royal houses of England, Russia, Spain, Servia, Saxe-Coburg, and Gothe [!].

* * * have made her persona grata among the eclat [!].

Thus the hideous Van Sickle influence is wiped out, and teachers as well an pupils turn to the loose and lovely vulgate.

From a morning paper’s report of the Hon. Dan Loden’s annual shindig:

Some of the celebrities present were Mayor’s Secretary Robert E. Lee, etc., etc.

If humble Bob is a “celebrity,” what must the super-Mahon Himself be? Obviously, nothing less than an archangel.

Engaged yesterday in issuing certain defiances and challenges to the Hon. Henry A. McMains, D. O., press agent of the League for Medical “Freedom,” Maryland Branch, that armed foe of Malicious Animal Magnetism, I ran out of space before I could discharge all of my parts of speech. I therefore summarize here what I was in the act of saying and what I was about to say, viz:

1. If the Hon. Mr. McMains will state publicly and in writing and on his word of honor as a man that the League for Medical “Freedom,” Maryland Branch, has a single member who is an allopath in good standing, and who holds an M. D. degree from any medical college on the Class A list of the American Medical Association, and is a member of that association in good standing, then I will give him seven cheap but aseptic cigarros.

2. If, failing this, the Hon. Mr. McMains will agree to the appointment of a committee of three men, one to be named by me, one by the Hon. Mr. McMains himself and the third by the other two, to examine the roll of the League for Medical “Freedom,” Maryland Branch, under a pledge of inviolable secrecy, and if this committee, after so examining the roll, reports to me in writing that it has found the name of one member who meets the conditions stated in Offer No. 1, but without telling me his name, then I will give the Hon. Mr. McMains seven cheap but aseptic cigarros.

So much for the Hon. Mr. McMains and his noble crusade to save us all from the cupidity of Dr. Ehrlich, Dr. Flexner and Dr. Welch. An ardent, if somewhat ungrammatical, propagandist; an insatiable humanitarian; a learned and convincing defender of sewer gas; an uncompromising champion of the common people—and yet, so I suspect, a somewhat impertinent bluffer and a very bad sportsman.

Say what you will against the cold weather, it has at least had the benign effect of freezing the Honorary Pallbearers. Not a resolution or a boggus statistic for two weeks.

The Hon. Oscar Underwood for first place! He has appendicitis!

Well, well, let us not laugh too hastily at that plan for turning the schoolhouses into Friendly Inns. It had, at all events, two prime merits, the one being that it was extremely virtuous and the other being that it was happily impossible of execution.

The standing of the clubs in the The National Typhoid League, as shown by the latest issue of the Public Health Reports:

Baltimore........................711 Philadelphia.......................193 Pittsburgh........................375
Boston................................149 Chicago...........................322 St. Louis.............................145
New York........................199 Cleveland............................000

Note the relative standing of Baltimore and Cleveland. Cleveland, it will be recalled, passed Baltimore in the race for population between 1900 and 1910. But in the typhoid race Baltimore remains an easy winner. A Baltimorean’s chances of dying of typhoid are now rather more than twice those of a Chicagoan, nearly four times those of a New Yorker or Bostonian, and nearly five times those of a Bostonian or St. Louisian. Meanwhile, the Old-Fashioned Administration devotes itself to planning preposterous tunnels under the harbor, to the diligent levying of special assessments, to the distribution of jobs among political rough-necks, to the leasing of city docks to mythical steamship companies, to the passage of affecting resolutions in praise of pretenders and cuckoos, to the mobilization of Sunday-school superintendents against Sunday novel-reading—but for typhoid it has no time and no money.

Oh, wurrah, wurrah! Oh, horrors, horrors! Now it is the Peabody art gallery that throws open its doors on Sunday! First the conservatory began giving Sunday organ recitals, and now the immoral syndics of the art gallery join in the crime! Last Sunday; so my spies tell me, fully 300 Baltimoreans braved the arctic blasts and went to Mount Vernon Place. Instead of spending Sunday as all decent Baltimoreans should, locked in their houses, silent, mirthless, half comatose, they entered that hall of shame and there diverted themselves with the debauchery called art.

Where were the police? Where were our militant moralists? Is it not a fact that the Peabody art gallery is full of statues in the altogether—that Hans Schuler’s “Adam and Eve” is there? Think of human beings profaning the Sabbath by looking upon such scandalous things! Think of such gross doings in this baltimoral town! Certainly the syndics, if they will break the Sabbath, should at least have the decency to provide overalls for Adam and a union suit for Eve. Even profligacy should have its limits. Even sin should stop somewhere.

I propose a public meeting to protest against this new outrage against purity. Let the Lyric be hired, and every virtuoso of virtue in Baltimore be invited. And then, when all of them are in their places, let some one sound a fire alarm and have the firemen turn their hose upon the assemblage.

A framed portrait of Martin Tupper to the Lord’s Day Alliance for a clear and specific statement of its aims and demands. Also, free space to print the said statement.

A lock of my hair to the Hon. Jake Hook if he can think of any reason why his alleged fear of niggero clerks under the merit system should not be set down as bogus and ridicuous, and hence discreditable to any man who pretends to common candor and common sense.

Boil your drinking water! Swat the fly! Root for Grover Cleveland de luxe! Get your smile ready for the special assessments and the sur-taxes! Pity the poor boomers!

Question respectfully addressed to the Hon. Henry A. McMains, D. O., press agent of the League for Medical “Freedom,” Maryland Branch:

Is it or is it not a fact that the League for Medical “Freedom,” Maryland Branch, defends the doctrine that a parent whose child is ill with diphtheria has an inalienable right to treat it, if he so desires, with hourly doses of Peruna, administered through the nose, and to turn it out to play with healthy children?