Baltimore Evening Sun (1 April 1912): 6.

Kog dit Drikkovand! Kog _______ Maelk! Kaus Fluen! _______ Henrik!

From the estimable Columbia (S. C.) ______ State:

Will the Free Lance of the Baltimore Evening Sun inform a bereaved p________ what has become of that grim-browed vavasour{?} of anti-vivisection, the Rev. Henry A. McMains, D.D.?

What! Haven’t you heard the news? A sad tale! Poor old Hen has been asphyxiated by inhaling the gaseous allopaths of the League for Medical “Freedom.”

The last day of rumble-bymble and slobber-gobble at Annapolis! Tomorrow the intolerable spasms and neuroses of katzenjammer! Wednesday morning, bright and early--the Spring plawing!

Before one grand jury hardly gets done, another one cuts loose, but you don’t never hear nothing about nobody goin’ to no jail.

The Hon. Bob Padgett and his merry men have triumphed in the City Council and the plan of alternative bidding on paving contracts is now in the discard, along with vansicklism and the merit system, but, meanwhile, it may be well for the texpayers of Baltimore to remember the gallant, if unsuccessful, fight for the open door made by the Hon. Duke Bond, and by his associate foes of Old-Fashioned Democracy. The Hon. Mr. Bond, true enough. has been walloped, but he takes his walloping in good grace and there is no discredit to him in it. A man who goes into a lions’ cage to wrestle with a dozen lions is very apt to lose. If he bites off the ears of two or three and pulls out the tails of two or three more, then we commonly grant that he has made an honorable showing. And the Hon. Mr. Bond, if I mistake not, has bitten off an ear or two and yanked valiantly at an occasional tail.

Because the City Council, as a whole, exhales a perfume as of dead and neglected things, we are apt to forget its Bonds and its Binswangers--men entirely above suspicion of petty political jobbing, and what is more, men of education, self-respect and good sense. It was Mr. Bond, I believe, who attacked and disposed of the super-Mahon’s masterly plan to rent a city dock to a half-mythical and entirely dubious steamship company. Again, it was Mr. Bond who led the fight against the chopping-up of the Polytechnic lot. Yet again, it was Mr. Bond who penetrated and blasted the super-Mahon’s exquisite scheme for locking the public out of the City Register’s office. Yet again, it was Mr. Bond who opened the war upon the proposed revision of the building code–a revision designed to put half of the property owners of Baltimore at the mercy of the politicians.

Maybe I am too lavish here with credits. No doubt other men had as much hand in some of these services as Mr. Bond himself; certainly he was always supported bravely by other men. But if he is not always the whole army of opposition, then he is at least a gallant captain in that army, and its defeats do him almost as much honor as its occasional victories. As things stand, the minority he represents is often routed and the plans of the political hacks go through–but think how much worse things would be if there were no minority to offer battle!

Service in the City Council is scarcely an experience of large appeal to an educated and intelligent man. Nowhere else in this town is honest effort so often futile. Nowhere else are the associations less stimulating. Nowhere else do the inherent weaknesses of democracy show more plainly. Nowhere else is the atmosphere more frankly that of the ward club and the corner saloon. To listen to the endless and ungrammatical gabbling of fourth and fifth rate men, most of them swelled to the bursting point by cheap vanity--to follow and checkmate the moves of ward politicians with no more comprehension of municipal problems and no more sense of civic welfare than so many immigrants--to observe the important part played in the whole disgusting farce by wire-pullers not actually on the scene--to do all this requires, in the first place, an abounding optimism, and in the second place a saving sense of humor, and in the third place a powerful stomach.

Most men qualified for efficient service in the City Council would reject, as an intolerable insult, any proposal that they accept membership, and of the good men who are willing to make the sacrifice not many could be elected. But now and then a man who is both able and eager sneaks by the guards–and the portion of that man is hard work and a heavy responsibility. His own plans for reform must often go a-glimmering. He has all he can do to expose and combat the contrary plans of ward bosses and ward heelers, of specious thimble- riggers and honest numbskulls.

The Hon. Duke Bond is such a man. By no means a paragon of all the virtues, and by no means the only intelligent and energetic man in the council, he is yet conspicuous enough and useful enough to serve as the archetype of the alert minority member. When his term expires in 1915, with that of the super-Mahon, and long-accumulated disgust produces the inevitable reaction toward intelligence in the city government–at that time the people of Baltimore will miss an excellent opportunity if they fail to find more and larger work for him.

Two learned ladies, battling homerically in this morning’s Sunpaper, drag me unwillingly into the ring. One employs me in the capacity of club, hobgoblin or half-brick. The other says:

[The Hon.] Mr. M............ is the only person employed by the general manager of The Sun who is at all favorably inclined [to woman’s suffrage].

Used as a lethal weapon, I can, perhaps, stand it, but I must protest bitterly against being labelled a suffragist. True enough, I composed and published, some time ago, a series of articles favoring the extension of the suffrage, but that, I may as well confess at once, was only because I was in love at the time with a suffragette. No more! I discovered her writing mash notes to members of the Legistature! And so I return to my old faith--and even now prepare a series of articles denouncing the extension of the suffrage as a madness, a deviltry and a crime.

For Spekaer pro-tem of the House of Delegates tonight:

The Hon. John Barleycorn.

Opposition candidate:

The Hon. Rudolf Katzenjammer.

Say what you will against them Johns Hopkins professors, they cert’ny handed a hot one to Harry.