Baltimore Evening Sun (3 June 1912): 6.

Idle blabbing of the Hon. William Toner, late of the Tax Department:

Apparently, however, [the Hon.] Mr. Hook does not care for suggestions.

Obviously, the Hon. Mr. Toner has never tried suggesting that the Hon. Mr. Hook make a speech.

The Hon. Mr. Toner also announces the discovery that the Hon. Mr. Hook hasn’t “an analytical brain.” Well, who said that he had? Certainly, good Jacobus himself has never made any such claim. He would scorn and pooh-pooh the idea. That truth is that his mind is of exactly antithetical cult and texture. That is to say, it is not analytical at all, but synthetical. He is a master of synthesis—perhaps the greatest among us. Given a cigar and a smile and he makes a friend. Given a rasher of terrapin and five minutes and he makes a speech two hours long. Given the super-Mahon and a job and he evolves an archangel.

If somebody was to ask you whether the City Council was worse or the Legislature was worse, a body wouldn’t hardly know what to say hardly.

Twenty-eight cheap but clean cigarros to dear old McMains, camerlengo, etc., for any evidence, etc., etc., that etc., etc., etc.

From the daily chronicle of the great case of Boardman vs. Virtue:

Professor Boardman spent yesterday afternoon conferring with his lawyer.

Optimistic man! Nine-tenths of us, facing a court that was also plaintiff and prosecuting attorney, not to say catchpoll, jury and jailer, would put barristers aside as vain rhetoricians and hasten to make favorable terms with some humane coroner.

Far be it from me, however, to question the fairriess of this august tribunal. That it will proceed to the trial of the scandalous professor with an entirely open mind is amply evident. For instance, consider this announcement in the official newspaper:

The School Board, as well as the rank and file of the public school teachers, are convinced that his claims will fall flat.

And this judicial rernark by McCosker, C. J., president of the court:

No proof can be adduced (i. e., on the professor’s side).

But despite all these indications of a calm and equitable judicial process, safeguarding all the prisoner’s rights and giving him a perfectly square deal, the betting odds in the Eutaw street poolrooms are still 7 to 1 that the chatty professor will scarcely achieve a triumph to stir the blood.

Meanwhile, it may be in order for a great public journal to point out to him a technical error in his procedure. Had he preferred charges against the School Board before the Mayor, instead of appealing vaguely to public sentiment, he would have been in the superior position of a plaintiff, and in addition it would have been impossible for the School Board, pending the hearing of those charges, to suspend him. In the long run, of course, he would have come to grief just as certainly, but during the progress of that long run he would have been drawing his wages.

However, it is now too late to bring in a new deck—and besides, it is always useless to offer advice to a pedagogue. No class of men are more set in their ways. And no class of men have less skill at those little tricks and chicaneries which lie at the heart of business and are the life blood of medicine, the law and the other learned professions.

May blessings rest upon the head of Cadmus, the Phœnicians or whoever it was that lately repaved Booth street between Gilmor and Stricker. Perhaps—who knows?—the honor and glory belong to the Hon McCay McCoy. But as for me, I rather suspect the Hon. William Larkins.

Psychotherapy is the theory that the patient will probably get well anyhow—and is certainly a sucker.

Stick an indictment onto a man, and if he wants to go to jail he’s got to fight his way in.

The standing of the clubs in the National Typhoid League, for week ended May 4:

Baltimore.......................537 Philadelphia.......................064
Pittsburgh......................187 New York..........................042
St. Louis........................145 Boston...............................000
Chicago.........................091 Cleveland..........................000

Thus the Orioles prepare to astound and enchant the visitors to the Democratic National Convention.

Certainly every Baltimorean who prefers the newspapers to the works of Bulwer-Lytton will hope for the speedy restoration of the Hon. King Bill Garland, now oppressed and exiled by difficulties which would shake the courage of better men. With Bill on his feet, life in Baltimore is seldom dull. He is constantly up to now tricks, and if at times those tricks displease the pious, they at least divert and delight the sinner. He is a fellow who thinks for himself and he is always able to defend his overt acts with masterly syllogisms. The First Branch of the City Council will miss him, for he has belonged to its small minority of intelligent men. Now that he is on sick leave the average of intelligence there will move another notch nearer that of the Pullman car porter and barroom pianist. May Bill come back—and soon! There are worse men in Baltimore—and many of them are Prominent Baltimoreans.

From the Washington correspondence of the New York Evening Post:

The Vice-Presidency is held in such light esteem today that nobody launches an active campaign for the nomination.

Can it be that news of a certain Great Statesman’s titanic straining and sweating has yet to reach New York? Or can it be that the Evening Post, after a lifetime unblemished by a single guffaw, or even chortle, takes to ribald and licentious humor in its old age?

If the latter, then every judicious man must grieve and whisper damn. For 40 years—or maybe, for all I know, for 70 years—the Evening Post has contemplated the Constitution of the United States without once loosing a snicker. To yield, after so marvelous and unparalleled an exhibition of sobriety and self-restraint, to the vulgarities of senile jocosity—that, indeed, would be the very devil of a flop.

Tip for the Maryland Anti-Vivisection Society, the alert, the ardent:

The Hon. Jacobus Hook has started to give away another carboy of cigars.