Baltimore Evening Sun (5 July 1912): 6.

From The Evening Sun of yesterday afternoon:

Determined upon a safe and sane Fourth, North, East, South and West Baltimore today joined hands. * * * There is a noticeable absence of the toy cannon and the giant firecracker.

From the venerable and veracious Sunpaper of this morning:

Following the example of a year before, when Baltimore led the country in the sane observance of the day, old King Firecracker was excommunicated from the streets.

Soothing, slippery words! But without the slightest suspicion of truth in them. The fact is, of course, that yesterday was one of the noisiest, nastiest Fourths that Baltimore had seen in years. Not since the nineties had there been louder explosions, or more of them. From early in the morning until late at night there was a continuous and nerve-wracking fustiade. Bullets flew through the air in all parts of the city. One boy was shot, a man narrowly escaped, another boy shot himself, and scores of children were mauled and mutilated by cannon crackers. In addition, there were nine fires that brought out the fire department, and dozens that were handled by citizens.

Altogether, it was a Fourth of July of the old-fashioned, maniacal, homicidal kind. The celebrations in the parks seem to have had no restraining effect whatever. And the poor cops, exhausted by the convention, could do nothing.

More hypochlorite! The City Council is going to meet all summer!

Boil your drinking water! Make your will! Engage a room at some comfortable hospital! Insure your life!

Discoursing lately upon suffragettes, I made the statement that I had never met one and was glad of it, and the further statement that I would flee at the sight of one like a frightened gazelle. This brought forth a remonstrance from a lady voter from California, lately visiting in our fair city, the which remonstrance the connoisseur of public debate may have noted in The Evening Sun of Thursday last. I quote:

In California [now an equal-suffrage State] we do not have gazelles. * * * Neither do we have suffragettes.

All of which is good news—but here in Maryland we have them both. What, then, is their aspect? Let me describe them briefly. A suffragette is any suffragist who visits newspaper offices during working hours. A gazelle is any newspaper man who gets timely warning that she is on the way. The distinguishing quality of the suffragette is her cruel capacity for the dialectic. The distinguishing quality of the gazelle is his precipitate speed.

But, as I have said, I myself have never yet witnessed an actual suffragette. I have heard of them often and more than once I have detected their approach to the atelier of the Sunpaper, but on every such occasion I have retired discreetly by the German-street rainspout and so I remain unscathed by their logic. It is not at all that I dread them as ladies, for my spies bring me news that every one of them, at least in Baltimore, is beautiful and charming, but that I fear them as debaters. And as further proof and earnest of that fear I publicly admit, perhaps with tedious iteration, every doctrine in their pharmacopœia. I am with them absolutely, and without the slightest reservation. Whenever they put forward a new argument I agree to it as soon as I hear it. And every truly discreet and sagacious man does the same.

Meanwhile, the courts are shut down for the summer and the thrones of jurisprudence are swathed in slip covers of damask—and the genial former sheriffs hang on to the muzuma.

More acute remarks from “The Physiology of the Human Body and Hygiene,” by Geheimrat Prof. Dr. John Turner, Jr., surgeon-general and arch-pathologist to the Loch Raven water-works:

Vocal exercise is highly necessary in voice culture. (Page 289.) Diabetes may be caused by absorption of sugars into the blood. It only occurs from eating too much sugar, and is transient; therefore it is not a true diabetes. (Page 190.) Abyssinians eat raw flesh, which is flavored excellently for them; we eat it only as a medicine. (Page 285.)

No matter how hot the summer gets, the more them stuffers will wish it would last forever.

The Hon. Champ Clark, it appears, is disposed to blame all of his woes upon the deviltries of the Hon. William Jennings Bryan. A comforting theory and one that will do neither gentleman much harm, but all the same a piece of nonsense. The truth is, of course, that the Hon. Mr. Clark was dispatched by public sentiment. All that the Hon. Mr. Bryan did in the convention was to give that public sentiment eloquent voice. The real work against the Hon. Mr. Clark was done by the thousands of telegrams that poured in upon the delegates from their homes and by the extraordinarily energetic and skillful work of the Wilson men on the floor. These Wilson men had a monopoly of argument. There was not a single valid reason for nominating the Hon. Mr. Clark. Even the argument that he had a majority of the instructed delegates went to pieces on inspection, for everyone knew that a majority of that majority represented, not the Democratic voters of the United States, but merely the Democratic machines of the United States. And it was a blue week for machines.

The state of affairs in the Maryland delegation was typical. The machine had carried the primaries for Clark, but every thoughtful man in the delegation was either for Wilson or for Underwood. The People of Baltimore, looking on from the galleries, were unmistakably for Wilson—perhaps by 20 to 1, certainly by 10 to 1. From the very first session it was obvious that the Wilson sentiment in the hall was overwhelming. Even on that great night when Trauty Trautfelter’s ward heelers were marched in and a deliberate attempt was made to start a stampede for Clark, the Wilson cheers were unmistakably louder and more sincere. The local machine men, in and out of the delegation, made a gallant effort to raise the roof for the Missourian, but it was the New Jersey man who really won on yells, as he was to win a few days later on votes.

The event spelled woe to the professional politicians of this fair State. Had they been able to nominate Clark and then carry the State for him, an enchanting vision of Federal patronage would have loomed before them. But as it is they face four years of turmoil and tribulation, with independents and other such scoundrels in office, and the machine making dizzy turns on one wheel.