Baltimore Evening Sun (3 April 1912): 6.

From a brief note by the Hon., Calvin W. Hendrick, in defense of the super-Mahon:

His Honor the Mayor * * * * * His Honor the Mayor * * * * * His Honor * * * * *

Lay it on thick, dear heart—and if one slush-bucket won’t suffice, use two!

The way Dan Loden is savin’ wood these days, a body would almost think he was a workin’ man.

From a bilious foe to the extension of the suffrage:

I was much affected by your brief account of your love affair with a suffragette. My congratulations on your escape! And don’t forget to weep for the poor devils who have actually married suffragettes.

Weep your grandmother! A man who has married a suffragette deserves to suffer—and perhaps often does. If he has married her in cold blood—that is to say, in his sober senses and with a full understanding of what he was doing—then he cannot protest against her ensuing neglects and tyrannies without writing himself down a caitiff and a cry-baby.. And if, on the other hand, he married her while non compos mentis—as a result, let us say, of her supernormal skill at persuasion—then he cannot complain later on without thereby confirming his inherent asininity.

In brief, the suffragette’s husband is just like any other husband: whatever his woes, he cannot ask for the anodyne of sympathetic tears. Matrimony, like war, is a dangerous game. The man who ventures into it takes his chances. If he knows its hazards in advance, then he has no sound ground for complaint when they turn against him. And if he is so stupid that he doesn’t know them in advance, then he is too stupid to be worth bothering about. The soldier faces sudden death; the married man faces home cooking. The most that either can ask, if the fortunes of the day go against him, is Christian burial.

Some men, when they go to war, are forever seeking the desperate hazard, the forlorn hope, the practical certainty of death. And some men, when katzenjammer makes them believe that they are dying of loneliness, play the long shot and marry suffragettes. Do they yell later on? Then let them yell!

Whenever Bill Broening thinks of them stuffers it reminds you of how a schoolboy thinks of the bathtub.

The injuries of the Hon. William H. Anderson, it appears, are considerably less serious than at first reported, and he now looks forward to leaving the hospital in a few days. Already he makes plans for a series of exhibition bouts in the various counties of Maryland. The first, if terms can be arranged, will be with Young Price of Wicomico county, who did excellent work in the late battle-royal at Annapolis. Young Price’s managers seem to be in no haste to match him with Anderson, but the latter is determined to have a meeting. As soon as he is discharged by the surgeons, he will go into active training on Kid Cochran’s farm. The betting in the kaifs is already 1 to 20 that Young Price will stay two rounds.

In the Journal of Animal Behavior for March-April, 1912 (Vol. II, No. 2), gives it an article on the psychological reactions of cockroaches (Periplaneta orientalis), by Prof. Dr. J. S. Szymanski, from the Institute for Experimental Biology in Vienna, written. The aim of this article, it appears, is (a) to prove that the cockroach, like the politictan, is photophobic (i. e., afraid of the light), and (b) to show that this fear may be overcome by training. To that end Prof. Dr. Szymanski describes experiments he lately made with an electrical table and a glass tube with but three sides. One end of the tube, which rested on the table, the open side downward, was darkened, and the roaches, in their untutored state, always sought it. But when an electric current was turned into part of the table, so that the roaches entering the darkened end of the tube were shocked, they quickly retreated to the lighted end, and after a while they showed a preference for this lighted end, even when no volts and amperes made a gehenna of the darkened end. From this fact Dr. Szymanski argues, with great sagacity and plausibility, that roaches have memories and are able to make deductions, and that, in consequence, they may be regarded as intelligent creatures, along with psychologists, bartenders, newspaper reporters and the better sort of judges on the beach.

An ingenious and beautiful experiment—but what a waste of time! Why go to all that trouble to prove that roaches are not incurably photophobic? Why not simply bring the jury to The Sun office and let it observe the roaches there disporting—roaches so far from being photophobic that many of them are actually photomaniacal—roaches which come out into broad daylight incessantly and shamelessly, and don’t care a hoot who knows it—roaches which rush for my paste-pot with wild, abandoned yelps, the moment it is taken out of the office safe in the morning?

Certainly, the rosettes of Vienna must be a pointed and osseocapital lot, if they really needed the elaborate training of Prof. Dr. Szymanski. Or can it be that they are humorists of acidulous kidney—that they planned the whole thing to have a bit of harmless fun with the solemn professor-doctor?

The super-Mahon’s own account, in his weekly witzblat of the recent Underwood dinner at Amnapolis:

Conspicuous among the prominent Democrats who sat at the guest table at the banquet was Mayor J. Harry Preston. * * * He was given one of the seats of honor. * * * In his friendly and affable way he shook hands with nearly every one present.

What scoundrel says now that the man is proud? To shake hands in public with humble members of the Legislature—certainly, democracy could little further go. Scarcely more democratic, indeed, was that Senator in Congress who once attained to fame by kissing a Pennsylvania avenue bartender.

An anti-vivisectionist is one who gags at a dachshund and swallows a First Reader.

The betting odds in the resuscitated boozeries, as the ticker reports them:

100 to 1 that Jim gets a job. 1,000 to 1 that Honest Bob don’t miss nothing.

Only 12 days more! And then the departure at the double—and without looking behind!

Twelve cheap but sanitary cigarros to the Hon. Henry A. McMains, D.O., etc., etc., for any evidence, etc., etc., etc.