Baltimore Evening Sun (13 February 1912): 6.

The daily thought from “Also sprach Zarathustra”:

Thou shalt love thy virtues—for thou wilt perish from them.

Whether the cause be the cold weather, the hygienic influence of the super-Mahon, the menace of the Mahool charter, a belated sense of shame, or mere accident, the fact must be noted gratefully that the odor radiated by the Hon. the City Council is considerably less powerful at the moment than it used to be.

Some kind friend sends me half a dozen lists of “the 20 greatest women,” with the request that they be embalmed in print and criticisms invited. A casual inspection shows that most of them are not worth the space. Few of them, for one thing, differentiate between the pioneer and the runner-up. Four, for example, include the name of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, but omit that of Sappho. Yet it must be obvious to everyone that, if Mrs. Browning was great, then Sappho was infinitely greater. Others overlook entirely some of the most memorable emancipators of their sex—women who broke down one or another of the barriers which once fenced it in. For instance, Mary Brewster, the first woman play-actor; Christine de Pisan (1363-1431), the first suffragette; Phebe of Cenchrea, the first deaconess, or trained social worker; Aphra Behn, the first woman dramatist, and Mary Baker G. Eddy, the first woman archbishop.

The only one of these women mentioned in the lists sent in in Mrs. Eddy, who appears twice. Personally, I am no believer in Christian Science, and yet I freely admit that it is an enormous success and that it has done much for women. Thousands of them are now making good livings as healers—an extremely lucrative and refined profession. The important thing here is that Mrs. Eddy insisted from the start upon the equality of the sexes. At one stroke she opened the doors of two professions—that of gaseous medicine and that of the ministry—to her own sex. Certainly no list of “the 20 greatest women” can be without her name.

Mrs. Behn, whose name does not appear in any of the current lists, perforrned a service to women of almost equal value. Not only was she the first woman dramatist, but in addition she was the first woman writer of salacious novels. In this latter field, as everyone knows, women are now far ahead of men. Well, if they are, then let their thanks go to Mrs. Behn, for she broke down prejudice and opened the way.

And so on, and so on. Far be it from me to propose a noe list. In such matters opinions must differ widely, and thus it will be eternally impossible to make up a list satisfactory to all. But if the greatness of a given woman is to be measured, not by her mere fame, but by her actual service to her sex, in throwing off its old handicaps and multiplying its opportunitles for self-expression and human usefulness, then the following women, in addition to those already mentioned, must not be overlooked:

Catherine of Russia. Cosima Wagner. Lucretia Borgia. Hetty Green. Angelica Kaufmann. Louise Michel. Sonia Kovalewski.

To these we may soon add that woman deputy sheriff of Pennsylvania who stands ready to hang a condemned felon. If fortune gives her this chance, the emancipation of woman will be achieved at one stroke. A public execution is the supreme act of civilization, the ultimate expression of society’s awful dignity and grandeur. If, now, a woman performs it, then it will be grotesquely absurd, ever thereafter, to prattle about the weakness, the inferiority of the sex. As I have already contended in this place, at great length and with earnest eloquence, women are ideally fitted for physical aggression. Give them the vote, and they will infallibly enforce their own laws. This hanging, if it takes place, will prove my contention. Certainly it will be impossible, after a woman has once performed the highest and most sublime function of the police power, to argue that the sex is inherently unfit for exorcising that power.

Boil your drinking water! Send a wreath to the boomers! Cover your garbage can! Help Harry! Swat the fly!

The standing of the clubs in the National Typhoid League for the week ending January 20, according to the Public Health Reports:

Philadelphia............................774 Chicago...............................137 Baltimore................................358 Cleveland............................000 New York...............................188 Pittsburgh............................000 Boston.....................................149 St. Louis..................... No report

O luckless Orioles! Still in second place. Last year they led the league from the start and closed with a percentage of more than 600, but since January 1 they have stuck in second place. Once Pittsburgh was the leader, but the Smoky City team is now suffering a batting slump, and Philadelphia is reaching for the pennant.

Why are the Orioles making such a bad showing? The most plausible theory so far put forward is that offered by a. medical correspondent. Says he:

The Orioles’ great success in the past is a handicap now. That is to say, typhoid fever has been so common in Baltimore for 20 years that almost everyone not naturally immune to it has now had it and thus acquired immunity. As a result, the number of possible victims is now greatly reduced. But when the new generation, growing up, reaches the typhoid age, the Orioles, I believe, will make better showing again.

The new charter of the boomers is oblique, disingenuous and indecent. It would thrust out of office a man honestly elected and deserving of his fair chance. If he is good, the voters who elected him are entitled to profit by it; if he is bad, they should bear the consequences. To criticize him savagely and openly is one thing; to attack him stealthily and from the rear is quite another thing. Let every member of the Legislature of Maryland, Republican or Democrat, burgher or muzshik, vote against the boomers’ charter. Thus and thus only can he salve his conscience. Thus and thus only can he save his bacon.

An anti-vivisectionist is one who gags, etc., etc., etc., etc.

Question respectfully addressed to the syndics of the estimable Lord’s Day Alliance:

Suppose that a committee of music-lovers were to arrange a series of orchestral concerts at the Lyric on Sunday afternoons, beginning at 3.30 o’clock and ending at 5.30, and suppose that nothing but instrumental music of undoubted artistic excellence were played, and suppose that an admission fee of 25 cents were charged to pay actual expenses, and suppose that all receipts over and above those actual expenses were turned over to some charity, not sectarian, to be named by Cardinal Gibbons, Bishop Murray and Mayor Preston—would the Lord’s Day Alliance approve or disapprove? And if it would disappove, what reasons, not theological, would it offer for such disapproval?