Baltimore Evening Sun (8 July 1912): 6.

Back River went wet yesterday, suddenly and beneficently. After four Sundays of acute dryness, with county cops watching every bartender and waiter, the sufferings of the common people were humanely relieved. Who gave the order I don’t know. But I do know that beer was on tap last night and that the common people fell upon it like Arabs striking an unexpected oasis. The rattle and the hiss of their eager refreshment were audible as far away as the North Point road. One and all, they gave thanks to fortune for their deliverance.

More work for the Lord’s Day Alliance. More excitement among the virtuosi of virtue. But they will have to hunt evidence very hard if they hope to prove that beer-selling at Back River makes for debauchery. I sat at Hollywood for two hours last night entirely surrounded by violatose of the Blue Laws, and yet I saw no debauchery, nor even much vulgarity. The people behaved admirably. There were no fights. No one was robbed. No one was murdered. Not once, in truth, was there a job for the gendarmes and bouncers.

On the contrary, everything testified to the orderliness and good humor of the crowd. A hundred or more couples danced in the dancing pavilion. No bunny hugging. No turkey trotting. Nothing but plain and decent dancing. A thousand men and women sat drinking in the huge beer hall. Not a single row. Not even a loud voice. Children played all about. Family parties were everywhere. An effective answer, I take it, to the moralists who harass and rowel these people—an impressive proof that there is no real danger to public morals in letting them have their Sunday pleasure in their own way.

But that there will be bellows of protest I have no doubt. The Blue Law of 1732 is still on the statute books of Maryland. It is far more important, according to the moralists, to enforce this decrepit and outrageous statute, this lingering relic of Puritan intolerance and bigotry, than to allow poor folk a chance to enjoy themselves harmlessly on their one day of rest.

Them ex-sheriffs don’t bother none about no high cost of living none.

For the first time in six months or more the estimable Democratic Telegram, in its current issue, contains no lambasting of the licentious Sunpaper. A benign innovation, and one that must be welcomed with tears of joy. It is a sad thing to see two such great family journals on the outs: one prefers to behold them in each other’s arms–

Eating huckleberries all day long And learning how to love.

Incidentally, the chance offers to extend sincere compliments to the chief editorial writer of the Telegram, whoever he may be. He wields what the country journalists delight to call a facile pen. That is to say, he writes fluently and well, and even when his case is bad, he supports it with unfailing ingenuity and plausibility. Altogether, a literary composer of decided skill and one whose talents deserve a wider field for their display—not that the Telegram itself is unworthy of good service, but simply that the circulation and influence of a local weekly are necessarily limited.

In preparing his articles for the current issue, this anonymous gentleman was sorely handicapped by bitter facts—facts which need not be gone into here, but which must be patent enough to any reader. He was equal, however, to the emergency. Evading any temptation to deny those facts or to explain them away, he devoted himself to the composition of a suave and well-tempered article, marked by good taste and cooling to a lacerated chest. In the whole of it he allowed himself but one reference to “the Mayor’s enemies,” those fantastic and immoral hobgoblins, those incorrigible hellcats. Well, one reference was not too much. It was a ticklish and depressing situation. Let us be thankful that the man told off to meet it was a man of sense.

Betting odds in the Eutaw street poker rooms, as reported by the police:

Eight to one that Wilson will carry Maryland. Two to one that Roosevelt will poll more votes than Taft.

Once more the rumor is going ’round that the Hon. Robert J. McCuen, Superintendent of Lamps and Lighting, contemplates matrimony. A vicious and persistent scandal, renewed incessantly by baffled and revengeful sirens. The truth is that the Hon. Mr. McCuen is still an utterly uncompromising bachelor. No longer ago than last Tuesday he renewed his oath of celibacy in the presence of a select committee of friends, laying his hand upon the Book of Deuteronomy and voicing the pledge in solemn, awful tones. He has been pursued for 20 years by maids and widows, and many of the latter have been women of great wealth. But at the age of 39 years, happy, opulent and free, he is still determined to spend the rest of his days a capella, surrounded by the creature comforts of a bachelor and with money in 16 banks.

The Hon. Bob Lee should blush to spread doubts about the courage and good faith of such a man. When he told the suffragettes that the Hon. Mr. McCuen was courting, he gave circulation to a gratuitous and intolerable libel. True enough, the Hon. Mr. McCuen has been courted in his time—and not once, but a hundred times—but if I ever saw him doing the courting himself, if I ever saw him sitting on a park bench holding hands, or hiding behind the smokestack of the steamer Louise, whispering candied nonsense into the avid ear of a widow, I should not hesitate to pistol him on the spot, as a traitor too depraved for the honorable rope and a maniac too dangerous to be left at large.

From the Statistischer Monatsbericht der Stadt Muenchen (Munich):

In brief, but one death from typhoid during the four summer months! Munich, in 1910, had 593,053 population. The population of Baltimore was 558,485. At the moment, I haven’t the local typhoid report for last summer at hand, but here are the figures for the months of June, July, August and September during the eight years preceding:

An average of 82.3 deaths in the four months. Never less than 61. In Munich last year, during the same months, there was but one death!