Baltimore Evening Sun (16 March 1912): 6.

Death shriek of the boomers as their ship goes down:

Preston? Change?

The following pleasant little note comes from an anti-vivisectionist:

I wish I had the the power to change you into a dog and turn you over to the tender mercies of a vivisectionist to be half-starved, experimented on and tortured until you die of convulsions.

An interesting sidelight upon the psychology of these booming mountebanks. How much of their frenzy is due to a desire to save the guinea pig, and how much to a desire to ruin the pathologist?

Only two weeks more of plangent phrases and canorous orismology at Annapolis! And then the ages-old battle with bull-briar and horse-mint, and the assiduous valeting of the affable moo-cow!

From an anonymous satirist writing on City Hall stationery:

Within you will find 500 votes in the Preston Vice-Presidential contest. I have taken the liberty of casting them all for you, and though I do not sign my same to them, they are otherwise perfectly regular. Have you got gall enough to put them in your list? You seem to be taking a lot of interest in the nomination of his Honor. Well, then, why don’t you go to the convention and nominate him yourself?

Why not, indeed! I am no spellbinder, to be sure, but I am willing to do my darndest. What is more, I am peculiarly eligible, for I am the only man in Baltimore who has ever said a kind word for the super-Mahon without the slightest hope of reward. Try to think of another. You can’t. Some of his eulogists are job-holders, others are seekers for jobs, others are city contractors, others are bankers who want city deposits, and yet others are professional flatterers of the great. But I am not a job-holder, nor a job-seeker, nor a contractor, nor a banker, nor a professional flatterer. And yet I have praised and defended the super-Mahon on more than one occasion, with great eloquence and subtlety, and should vote for him if he were a candidate for re-election tomorrow, just as I voted for him last May. Thus I feel perfectly free to enter the lists.

At noon today (disregarding all candidates receiving fewer than 100 votes) the vote stood as follows:

The Hon. James McC. Trippe.....................................1,268
The Hon. Isaac Lobe Straus........................................1,116
The Hon. Jacobus Hook..............................................1,057
The Hon. Bob Lee....................................................... 950
The Hon. Harry S. Cummings..................................... 942
The Hon. Stovey Brown.............................................. 823
The Hon. Aristides Sophocles Goldsborough............. 771
The Hon. John Walter Smith....................................... 521
The Hon. Francis K. Carey.......................................... 520
The Hon. H. L. Mencken............................................. 500
The Hon. McCay McCoy............................................. 492
The Hon. Edward Rossmann........................................ 407
The Hon. Bob Carr........................................................ 406
The Hon. Mr. Fred........................................................ 381
The Hon. William H. Anderson.................................... 365
The Hon. Isidor Rayner................................................. 300
The Hon. Trauty Trautfelter.......................................... 154
The Hon. J. M. T. Finney, M. D. .................................. 117
The Hon. Edgar F. Dobson............................................ 112
The Hon. D. J. Loden..................................................... 109
The Hon. George Konig................................................. 100

Meanwhile, here is the voting coupon, which is to be sent in, when filled out and signed, to the Judges of Election, in care of The Evening Sun:

For the distinguished honor of placing the H. M. the super-Mahon in nomination as Democratic candidate for Vice-President of the United States, I vote for
The Hon. ........................................
(Signed) .............................

This coupon will be printed again on Wednesday, when the progress of the vote will be reported. The poll will close on April 1, promptly at the stroke of noon.

An anti-vivisectionist is one who gags at the typhoid vaccine--and swallows “Science and Health.”

Summary convictions for disorderly conduct and other minor offenses in New Zealand before and after the adoption of local option in 1895:

under license.
Per 1,000
Year Number of Population.
1888 14,259 23.6
1891 13,051 20.7
1894 12,613 18.6

under no-license.

1897 14,875 20.6
1900 18,485 24.2
1903 24,765 30.2
1909 30.697 31.6

Topics for debate for our village debating societies:

Resolved, That Charlemagne was almost as great a man as H. M. the super-Mahon. Resolved, That the Old-Fashioned School Board might be worse. Resolved, That it is worse.

Two critical biographies well worth reading:

“Lafcadio Hearn,” by Nina Kennard.
“Oscar Wilde,” by Arthur Ransome.

Only 11 months and 19 days to March 4, 1913. And then, at one stroke, Baltimore’s greatest loss and Maryland’s greatest glory.

Headline from the estimable Sunpaper of January 22, 1909:

STATE TO SUE SHERIFFS.

Governor Says They Must Give Up Fees in Excess of $3,000.

Oh, la, la! Oh, la, la, la! Oh, la, la, la, la! Oh, la, la, la, la, la!

June 2 will be the third anniversary of the actual suits against the ex-Sheriffs. These suits are now no further advanced than they were the day they were filed. The trial of them, on their merits, is still a thing of the dim and misty future. All the jousting witnessed so far has been over preliminary technicalities. One of these technicalities held up the cases 14 months.

The amount at issue, counting interest, is now about $60,000. This sum, if the Constitution of Maryland is to be believed, belongs to the people. But it is still in the hands of the ex-Sheriffs.

Imagine the mental state of a human being who is at once a local optionist, an anti- vivisectionist, a spiritualist, a vice crusader and a Preston man!

Meanwhile, work upon the $1,000,000 bridge to the Brooklyn poolrooms is so far progressed that it will probably be opened by the spring of 1925.

Local option went into effect in New Zealand in 1895. Between that year and 1908 the population increased 49 per cent. During the same time the number of paupers in the colony increased 81 per cent., the number of bankruptcies 55 per cent. and the number of judgments for debt 83 per cent.

Every time a Baltimore tax-payer pays his State taxes he helps to save some country politician from the plow! Laugh, philanthropists, laugh!

A pound of prunes to any one who believes that it will be at all difficult to get a drink at Back River on any Sunday afternoon of next summer.