Baltimore Evening Sun (28 March 1912): 6.

So much dust is arising from the mat that it is impossible to see the boys very clearly, but various persons of extremely sharp vision tell me that the Hon. Bob Crain, at the moment, is on top, and that the shoulders of the Hon. William H. Anderson occasionally approach to within six millimeters of the canvas. And yet it would be extremely unwise to assume that the Hon. Mr. Anderson has lost the bout, or even that he is getting the worst of it. He is pre-eminently what the connoisseurs of the manly art call a penultimate-round fighter. That is to say, he often comes back, after a long season of adversity, with startling and devastating suddenness. Thus he may yet snatch victory from the very esophagus of defeat. I, for one, should not be surprised to see him slip from under the Hon. Mr. Crain, capsize the Hon. Mr. Crain and jam the shoulders of the Hon Mr. Crain into the mat.

Meanwhile, the police should show greater efficiency in keeping spectators back from the ropes. During the last few days a number of innocent and highly respectable rural gentlemen, crowding a bit too close, have been seriously injured by the flying knuckles of the candidates. The Hon. Mr. Anderson, always courteous to the verge of affectation, has bawled his apologies from the centre of the dense fog in which the fight goes on, but apologies must need seem puny balsams to a man who has lost half of his whiskers and 80 per cent. of an ear.

The one plausible argument for ward representation in the City Council is that it makes for free and useful discussion--that the views of ward delegates are worth hearing and deserve to be heard. The answer to that argument is to be found in any stenographic report of any Council session since the year 1750.

The Advertising Club of Baltimore, so my spies tell me, is sending out boom literature bearing a drawing of a terrapin rampant, with an inscription across the creature’s abdomen. In the humblest possible spirit I rise to make the suggestion that the words “This is a terrapin” be inscribed adjacent, with a hand or arrow pointing to the figure. Certainly the Advertising Club does not want the person it addresses to fall into the error of assuming (quite naturally, perhaps, in the absence of specific information) that the beast is a tortoise.

From the estimable Evening Sunpaper of yesterday:

Probably the most talked of as being slated for dismissal is Col. Jacob W. Hook, the City Collector. He has been valiant in his defense of the Mayor, and his dismissal would be the rankest kind of treatment.

Rank? The word is too mild, too puerile, too effeminate! Rather say atrocious, villainous, depraved, wicked, flagitious, shameful, scandalous, indecent, infamous, disreputable, nefarious, vile, heinous, dark, base, ignominious, outrageous, vicious, profligate, dissolute, sinful, debased, opprobious, obloquous, impudent, brazen, abandoned, graceless, insolent, contumacious, treasonable, felonious, nauseous, loathsome, sickening, repulsive, revolting, odious, baleful, foul, abominable, abhorrent, detestable, shocking, hateful, gross, immodest, unseemly, insulting, impertinent, saucy, diabolical, intemperate, inordinate, barbarous, cruel, ferine, brutal, inhuman, ruthless, brutish, vandalic, ferocious, ravenous, bearish, pitiless. relentless, heathenish, vansicklish, remorseless, ungrateful, perfidious, faithless, false, savage, anthropophagous, mean, low, despicable, contemptible, knavish, ignoble, scurvy, shabby, nasty, satanic, andersonic, impious, infernal, devilish, hellish!

Fire Jake? Not if there is a drop of red blood left in the super-Mahon! To lay down your life for your friend--there is heroism, to be sure. But to make yourself ridiculous for your friend--there is heroism of infinitely loftier quality. And it is just that loftier heroism, that higher, sublimer sacrifice, that Jake has laid at the feet of his exalted chief.

Hermann Bahr, whose excellent comedy, “The Concert,” was on view in Baltimore last week, has done a number of other pieces of equal cleverness, and it is a wonder that some astute frohman does not have them clawed into English. For example, “Der Meister” (The Master), which was presented in German in 1910 by the Irving Place Theatre Company, of New York. The protagonist in this curious play is a German surgeon of high attainments, a man so thoroughly intellectual and so accustomed to dealing with hard facts that he dismisses all emotion as weak and childish. The conflict of the action arises out of his effort to enforce his principles of logic and equity upon the less philosopbleal but more human persons about him. In the end, of course, he falls miserably. When his wife deceives him and he promptly forgives her, telling her that he assumes no right to order her acts, he gets for his pains, not her gratitude, but her hearty scorn--and in addition his more conventional brother denounces him for neglecting the family honor. Altogether, the plece is an incisive study of the part played by emotion on the one hand and by precedent on the other in human life, and its popular success in Germany indicates that it would be equally well received here.

Another characteristic Bahr comedy is “Die Kinder” (The Children), a sort of satire upon the domestic tragedy of the Ibsen brand. At the start we observe the progress of a love affair between the daughter of an eminent physician and the son of a proud count. The physician, occupied by his work, takes no notice of it until the young man comes to him to ask his daughter’s hand. Then he throws a bombsbell upon the scene by confessing that the suitor is his own son--that he and the dead countess, in years gone by, deceived the count. Sensation! Enter the count himself, at the gallop. The news he brings is both astounding and comforting. He, too, has a confession to make. The supposed daughter of the physician is really his daughter! And so the tragedy turns to comedy and wedding bells bring down the curtain.

Somewhat alkaline stuff, of course, for American audiences--but what of “Measure for Measure,” what of “Camille,” what of our common farces, with their joyous celebration of infidelity? Let it be said for Bahr that he handles his theme with good taste and good humor. Much of the comedy arises out of the fact that the supposed daughter of the physician is intensely proud of his humble origin and of his struggle upward against great odds, and in the complementary fact that the supposed son of the count is intensely proud of the ancient lineage of his family. A joke upon the worshipers of ancestors--and no less upon those who worship the humble than upon those who worship the magnificent. Certainly the American people are ripe for such a play.