Baltimore Evening Sun (29 January 1912): 6.

The daily thought from “Also spracg Zarathustra”:

War and courage have done more great things than charity.

For Vice-President of the United States, The Hon. James H. Preston, of Maryland. An independent, fearless, de- termined, forthright man! Say what you will against him, you can never accuse him of cowardice, of indecision, of weakness, of time-serving, of trimming, of false pretenses. What has become of the old charge that Sonny Mahon would boss him? He can stand a wallop—and he knows how to wallop. He is his own man—and so are a lot of other follows! He may be wrong nine times out of ten—but he gets away with it ten times out of ten! Fight him, denounce him, laugh at him—but keep your eye on him! —Adv.

From a letter in The Evening Sun bearing the sign manual of my old and good friend, the Hon. Henry A. McMains, D. O.:

The League for Medical Freedom has successfully demonstrated * * * that it is not suported by patent-medicine interests. * * *

A delicate method, it would appear, of arguing that Peruna is not a patent medicine. Otherwise, how are we to account for the fact that the Hon. C. S. Carr, M. D., of Columbus, Ohio, a member of the Advisory Board of the League and one of its chief rhetoricians, is also publicity agent for Peruna?

Another extract from the epistle of the Hon. Mr. McMains:

We would be glad to show our subscription list to your editor at any time for the purpose of convincing him of this fact.

Is this a sincere offer? No more sincere, I believe, than my good friend’s pious gabble about the undoubted allopaths on his roll! But to be entirely fair to him, to give him every chance to prove his sincerity, I make these offers:

1. If he will send to the Editor of The Evening Sun, for publication in the columns of that excellent journal, the subscription list of the League for Medical “Freedom,” Maryland Branch, for 1911, accompanied by a certificate, on his word of honor, that it is complete and correct, I shall be glad to give him eight cheap but aseptic cigars.

2. If he will annotate the said list—that is to say, if he will write after each name the estate and quality of its bearer, whether allopath, homeopath, eclectic, mechano-therapist, osteopath, anti-vivisectionist, Christian Scientist, Emmanual Mover, New Thoughter, chriropractic, vegetarian, fruitarian, uric scientist, patent-medicine seller or “divine” healer—then I shall be glad to add eight more cheap but aseptic cigars. In this connection the following paragraphs from the current issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association—the so-called Medical Trust—may be of interest:

Q. E. D. [1] The National League for Medical Freedom is opposed to the Owen bill, which would transfer the Bureau of Chemistry of the Department of Agriculture to the proposed Department of Health. [2] Dr. C. S. Carr, the publicity agent for Peruna, is a member of the advisory board of the National League for Medical Freedom. [3] In Colliers, January 20, Samuel Hopkins Adams says, speaking of Peruna: “The proprietor of a large wholesale drug house in the Middle West tells me: ‘Peruna is nowhere. We used to get a carload or even two in a month—now we hardly handle a carload a year.’” [4] Who wouldn’t want “freedom” from oversight by a bureau whose embarrassing insistence on facts cuts down one’s busluess to one-twelfth or one twenty-fourth of what it used to be! Quod erat demonstrandum.

Give me the interest them ex-sheriffs are gettin’ on the money and I wouldn’t care a darn how long them cases was to last.

From the Sunpaper’s report of the harangue of the Hon. Young Cleveland at Friday night’s banquet of the Washington College alumni:

Not that these new things [i. e., “the new-fangled merit system and new-fangled city charters”] would do especial harm, nor that I am personally opposed to them. * * *

Headline on the report of the same speech in the official organ of the Old-Fashioned Administration:

MAYOR AGAINST MERIT SYSTEM Say New Charter Will Be Defeated Unless That Feature Is Removed.

Which are we to believe? As for me, I believe that paper which prints things exactly as it is ordered to print them, and without any impertinent attempts at either humane interpretation or translation into English.

From The Elementary Teacher, the official mouthpiece of those militant schoolmarms who got the goat and scalp of the late Van Sickle:

In voting to abolish any condition or conditions attending raise of salary to the maximum, the Baltimore School Board has removed a source of contention and irritation which has been for many years a bar to union and to progress.

Well, just what was that source of contention and irritation? None other, it appears, than the abominable theory, so indecently supported by the vile Van Sickle, that a teacher who is competent should get more money than a teacher who is not competent.

From a newspaper report of a speech made by the Hon. Mahoni Amicus at a recent public victualing:

Say to yourselves and to your friends that you have a city and State without graft, as you certainly have. [Laughter in several parts or the room.]

And proceeding, it would seem, from the lungs and gullets of the hon. gent’s hosts. In which connection the following quotation from “The Secrets of Etiquette,” by Myrtle Muldoon, may be of interest:

Faux Pases.—Never laugh at a guest, no matter how ridiculous his actions. Even should he choke on a fish bone, or besmear his waistcoat with mayonnaise, or cut his face with an eating knife, or sneeze so powerfully as to blow out the candles, the polite hostess will hold her mirth. Hospitality demands that there be no invasion, however innocent, of the guest’s amour propre. So long as he is in the house it is improper to denounce, ridicule or otherwise bring into question any of his habits, prejudices or mannerisms.

Let us have an end, therefore, of this growing custom of laughing at the honorable gentleman. When he goes to a public banquet in his official capacity he should be treated with gravity and dignity. Any other course is bound to be far more discreditable to his hosts than it can possibly be to him.

Boil your drinking water! Root for Young Cleveland! Pipe the Prominent Baltimoreans on the Ward Heelers’ Committee! Cover your garbage can! Swat the fly!

A keg of sardellen to any spiritualist who can send a spook to haunt me.