Baltimore Evening Sun (22 June 1912): 6.

THE OFFICIAL FORECAST. [The Hon. the super-Mahon in his weekly paper:] When the showdown comes he [I] will be unanimously nominated for Vice-President.

Third installment of Dr. John Turner’s holographic interview with himself:

“Doctor Turner, don’t you think Mencken is a good reporter?” “No. Why not tell the truth when reporting? My opinion is that a good reporter should get all the good he can from a story, not fill it with venom; but fill it with wit and good sense. Mud throwers never thrive. They are like carp, they always taste and smell like mud. It sticks. What is the sense of flinging mud at a climber? Is it not wiser to assist an ambitious man; not retard him? Fortunately, however, a man of ambition pays little heed to silly criticisms. Such knocks make a real man stronger and sharpen his wit. With all your faults I love you still is a good motto.” [Continued tomorrow.]

After all, why shouldn’t John interview himself? Harry is going to nominate himself.

You can’t hardly blame the boys none for tryin’ to get into Harry's bar’l, what with the times so hard.

The Hon. Henry A. McMains, camerlengo of the League for Medical Freedom, Maryland branch, is now a contributor to the Pocomoke City Ledger-Enterprise, an estimable gazette of the Chesapeake littoral. From the same Issue in which his first appeal for medical freedom appears I take the following note by the fair Assistant Editor:

Some one asked me if Pocomoke is a healthful place. Here’s where I plunged into trouble. I told them about the grip and the malaria and the freezing (?) summers, etc., etc. For the sake of the real estate men I won’t repeat it all.

Obviously old Pocomoke offers excellent opportunities to the medical freedomists. Let us now note with due amazement how osteopathy disposes of the grip, how Christian science flabbergasts the buzzing anopheles, how Peruna lays the heat.

Poniard plunged into the chest of the Hon. the super-Mahon by the Hon. William H. Anderson, that satanic fellow:

The one huge political joke in Maryland today is the Vice-Presidential candidacy of the Hon. James Harry Preston, mayor of Baltimore, and the imposing front (whether real or false is a mooted question) of the unspeakable Democratic city liquor ring, which was repudiated by the people in the state election last fall.

This from the current issue of the Americn Issue, Maryland Edition. Let all connoisseurs of cacophony now await the super-Mahon’s answering bellow in the Democratic Telegram. When two such gladiators get together a gallery seat is worth $2. Meanwhile the betting on the result is at even money. The Hon. Mr. Anderson, true enough, has vastly superior science; but when it comes to hullabalooing Harry don’t ask no odds off’n no man.

Those gentlemen who now crow so ecstatically over the butchery of the Hon. Theodore Roosevelt display to the full that rich and copious imbecility which is the distinguishing mark of a certain type of hoggish politician. The truth is, of course, that every spear they hurl at Theodore will find its ultimate home in their own gizzards. By proceeding against him foully and shamelessly, by using in the business all the petty tricks of ward heelers and dog stealers, they have won him the sympathy of every American of decent instincts, and the result is that he is certain to get a very satisfying revenge in November, whether he himself is elected President or not.

It would have been much safer for the Republican party had he been promptly nominated at Chicago. After all, he is obviously the most popular politician before the people today—and as for his new and more fantastic politics, no sane man takes them too seriously. From the very start the effort to renominate Mr. Taft showed its fatuity. He has lost the confidence of all save a small minority of the people, and any Democrat suported by a united party, even Clark or Bryan, could beat him easily. But Roosevelt, with all Republican factions supporting him, would probably defeat the most likely Democrat available by fully 1,000,000 votes.

But the political manipulators at Chicago feared him—not because they thought the people were against him, but because they knew that the people were contumaciously with him—and so they proceeded to beat him by the time-honored methods of political chicanery. The result is hopeless and overwhelming disaster for the orthodox remnant of the Party. It cannot possibly win with Taft, and it is highly unlikely to win with any other man. If the Democrats nominate a progressive he is sure to be elected. And if, yielding to their own Penroses and Barneses, they nominate a reactionary, then the chances are that the progressives of both parties will unite behind Roosevelt and elect. him against the field.

The trouble with the professional wire-pullers is that they constantly overestimate the value of the immediate advantage. They had Theodore by the neck at Chicago and so they assumed that they gad the country by the neck, too. The same mistake was made by the local Democratic bosses last fall. With one of their trusties handing out city jobs and other trusties stuffing the ballot boxes they set out to make a killing. And the first frult of their benign endeavor was the election of a Republican Governor.

The issue in that election was the same issue now raised at Chicago—the issue, to wit, of political crookedness vs. ordinary decency. The Hon. Mr. Goldsborough was not elected because a majority of Marylanders were Republican, but because a majority of Marylanders were sick of the saturnalia of political debauchery in Baltimore. In Chicago the Hon. Mr. Roosevelt has managed, for all his defeat, to make that same issue paramount. It is now no longer a question whether a man is a good Republican or a bad Republican, but a question whether he is a man of self-respect or an apologist for rogues.

The old-fashioned Health Department, not to be outdone, is now giving away a Preston button with every death certificate.—Adv.

Fragments from an unfinished ode to “the only reliable newspaper”:

Haste, Towel, and let him have the dear pomade, Fragrant with scents of musk and asphodel! The time grows short; eftsoon the whistle blows: Scatter the bay-rum; let the tonic fly; And spread the grateful talcum over all! * * * The fevered gill Yields to the soft massage, and then a smile Lights up that frank and open countenance.