Baltimore Evening Sun (12 June 1912): 6.

Scurrilous note from a disenchanted kaif-keeper:

Anderson is in it for what there is in it. All he thinks about is that $5,000 a year. Offer him more money somewhere else and he would let Maryland go wet.

An ancient and familiar charge. In one form or another, the Hon. Mr. Anderson’s enemies, of whom I have the honor to be one, have been making it for several years past. Reduced to a straightforward (if somewhat libelous) proposition, it comes to this: That the hon. gent. would quickly abandon his present job, and even take a job on the other side, if the ante were raised high enough.

Very well, let us look into it. Going further, let us test it. That is to say, let us get together a seizeable anti-local-option fund and offer him more than he is getting now. And let us thereby find out, once and for all time, whether he is a true believer or only a rice convert, like the Chinamen bagged by missionaries. I accordingly make three proposals: (a) That the hon. gent. be offered $15,000 a year for five years to fight local option in Maryland. (b) That a committee of ten prominent Baltimoreans be appointed to collect and disburse the fund. (c) That every Baltimorean who has ever questioned the hon. gent.’s good faith be invited to contribute.

Pending the election of this committee and the opening of offices, I have taken the liberty of appointing the Hon. Jacobus Hook, a reliable and neutral man, temporary treasurer, and have instructed my secretary to send him my check for $1,000. Who will be the second contributor?

The more the grand jury indicts a man the more harder it is to get the rollers under him.

Cross-section of the asphalt paving in front of the Marlborough Apartment House, on Eutaw Place:

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More treasonable carelessness by the usually assiduous Hot Towel:

It is conceded from many quarters that Mayor Gaynor of New York could have the [vice-presidential] nomination if he wanted it.

Any man who concedes that, or even imagines it, is a false witness and a loose liver, a conspirator and a scoundrel, and the corrupt hireling of a lewd and soulless press.

From one of the day’s dispatches from Chicago:

Mr. William Barnes, the Taft leader in New York * * said that the real purpose of his visit was * * * to save the Republican party and keep it true in its adherence to the Constitution.

Curious, isn’t it, how all the spoilsmen and blacklegs are ardent worshipers of the Constitution?

Medical, chirurgical and dietetic dicta from “The Physiology of the Human Body and Hygiene,” by the Hon. John Turner, Jr., M. D., surgeon-general of the old-fashioned administration:

Abyssinians eat raw flesh, which is flavored excellently for them; we eat it only as a medicine. (Page 285.) Children prefer plain food, and should have them prefe.rably. (Page 285.) It is said that bathing in the Salt Lake, near Salt Lake City, is not a bathing, but a “sitting.” as you cannot “sink” in that marvelously natural creation of the hidden secrets. (Page 247.)

Genial note to the Editor of The Evening Sun, from the Hon. F. A. Newton, of 2735 Maryland avenue:

Heaven help us if here isn’t Mencken again! Will the Editor of The Evening Sun please tell us why? Is all that space intended for a funny column, or is it that new kind of philosophy some one in The Sun says that super-intelligent being is a great student of? It must be awfully wearing on his think-wheels, as, in addition to his hideously funny or philosophic sayings, he feels himself called upon to be judge, jury and counsel on all subjects under the Sun that might puzzle lesser intellects. Of course, the Editor knows what it is all about--but the limited intelligence of the average Sun reader can’t make it out. Again why?

A reasonable question--but, unluckily, I can offer no answer to it. To any reflective man the fact that he draws wages every week must occasionally take on the aspect of a baffling, and even appalling mystery. But it is always comforting to think that most members of the judiciary, when they sit in their shirt-sleeves after court has adjourned, are prohably puzzled just as diabolically. Also, consider the case of the physician whose patient recovers from a theoretically fatal disease. Certainly it must strain him a good deal to take the money,. and even more to keep from blushing.

Meanwhile, good Newt, don’t let that “new kind of philosophy” worry you. As for me, I never heard of it until I returned lately to my studio and found my valet de chambre pasting a newspaper clipping into that family Bible. Another clipping, already firmly glued to Leviticus, contained the statement that I was a woman-hater and the despair of the fair anthropophagi. Imagine the effect of that astounding fiction upon the fortunes of a man who has been waiting on a rich widow for three years!

From the New York Worldpaper of this morning:

Give Lincoln a rest: give him a rest. When a politician pretends to be like Lincoln * * * that is the surest proof that he is only a cheap imitation.

Another foul attack upon the super-slandered super-Mahon! His likeness to old Abe, as a lawyer, a martyr and a man, is his chief comfort, and in his running autobiography in the Hot Towel he calls attention to it every few days. Is he now to be robbed of that sweet unction by the scoundrelly assaults of an immoral and bloodthirsty press?

A bottle of mayonnaise to any Baltimorean who believes that it will be at all difficult to get a drink at Back River next Sunday.

What has become, by the way, of the Greater Baltimore Committee? For three months not a new boom has emanated from its atelier and for one month not a cheer. Hadn’t the police better break in and find out what has happened?

The standing of the clubls in the National Typhoid League, for the week ending May 18:

Third place, alas and alack! And proceeding from deaths reported to cases reported the Orioles actually drop to fourth place! Oh, hypochlorite! Oh,vaccine! Viz:

Yet hope hops high. The warm weather is still to come. A fortunate batting streak may restore the Orioles to their honorable, their traditional, their old-fashioned pre-eminence.