Baltimore Evening Sun (20 July 1912): 6.

The suffrage question in Maryland has now simmered down to a spat over the pulchritude of one of the suffragettes. Is her hair red or brown? Does she wear a psyche knot or a bun? Is she freckled or not freckled? Is she fat or merely plump? Thus the dear girls, abandoning the uplift, return frankly and enthusiastically to the one problem that inflames them more than all the sorrows of the orld. Thus the cause in our fair State is reduced to its lowest common denominator.

The far-and-well-known Colonel Hook, of the city of Baltimore in America, announces the intention that he will honor Munich with a visit in August. Of this eminent man much has been written in the papers. He is a high official of the Baltimore magistracy and has an international celebrity as an orator. The Munich magistracy will receive him as befits his rank and fame, and already plans make for public honors to him. We hear that among other things, there is proposed a gala banquet at the Ratshaus, with later on some public speech-making from a stand in the Promenadeplatz. Burgomaster Dr. Kraus has thereto appointed a committee consisting of Mr. Taxgatherer Volkmann, Mr. Chief Police Director Wallenstein, Mr. Sanitation Councillor Dr. Mueller and Mr. High Fire Director Himmelmeyer, who will receive Colonel Hook at the Central Railroad Station and attend him during his visit. The magistracy has made a suitable grant from the city funds to meet the necessary expenses.

The Muenchener Mercur also prints an article in praise of Col. Hook, but it calls him a criminologist and seems to confuse him with the late warden of the City Jail. The Morgenblatt ranks him, as an orator, with Depew, Webster and Bryan. The Conservative Abendzeitung prints both a news article and an editorial. In the latter it says:

Not the least service of the estimable visitor, saying nothing of his military achievements as indicated in his title and of his skill as a public speaker, has been his lifelong battle for the security of society. The whole press of Europe lately recounted his successful attack upon the Socialist Toner, leader of the Left In the Maryland Landtag.

The Volksblatt, which is the Munich yellow journal and has strong Socialistic sympathies, says nothing about the Toner episode, but goes its contemporaries one better by printing this wholly fanciful wood-cut of Colonel Hook:

{illustration}

How the notion ever got to Munich that the Colonel wears whiskers is beyond imagination. Probably the news editor of the Volksblatt, eager to beat the other papers and willing to take a chance, fished up an old medical cut from the hell-box and labeled it with the Colonel’s name. A German friend tells me that the cut looks suspiciously like one widely printed in Germany, five or six years ago, representing a Leipzig grosshaendler, who was cured of sciatica by a popular patent medicine.

The estimable Hot Towel of this morning, as in duty bound, prints a long article arguing that there has been no break between MM. Hubert and Gwinn and the Hon. the super-Mahon. The Towel, it would appear, defines a break as a headon collision, with emission of blood. Accepting that definition, it must be obvious that there has been no break. MM. Hubert and Gwinn plunge no poniards into the super-Mahon. When they meet him in the City Hall corridors they do not attack him with cuspidors. But in the matter of helping kosher contractors it cannot be maintained, even by the Towel, that they offer him any outward signs of a genuine affection. To talk of breaks, perhaps, is a bit harsh, a bit hyperbolical, but certainly one perceives a slight crack, a microscopic crevice, an unwonted and suggestive hiatus.

Further contributions to the roster of intolerable pests:

The following note comes from Towson, with every aspect of genuineness:

I am a young man recently out of college. I write poetry and articles, but have no success in selling them to the magazines. I have a yesrning to be a newspaper reporter, and I think it a noble profession. Can you let me know how I can obtain a position as reporter? Let me know what are their duties and what salaries they get. I understand that most reporters get about $40 a week.

First, dear Rudolph, burn your poetry. Then go to see a City Editor. Then keep on going to see him until he sees you. Then stick to him until he gives you a job. Then do your darndest with the job.

As for the remuneration of reporters, don’t let it worry you. Reporters seldom die rich, but I have never heard of a good one starving to death, or even going without malt liquor. Besides, you are very young. By the time you are 40, at which age the arteries of reporters begin to grow brittle, there will be an old-age pension law on the statute books, and you will be entitled to your five shillings.

Daily thought from “The Physiology of the Human Body and Hygiene” by Geheimrat Prof. Dr. John Turner, Jr., head of the super-Mahonic medical department:

A healthy man’s brain is full of energy and flushed with nature’s best and strongest thoughts when he awakens. If he eats breakfast, that, too, should reinforce the high spirited feeling. (Page 114.)

Recent admissions to Sydenham Hospital:

The Greater Baltimore Committee.
The two-year paving clause.

The least profane department head in the City Hall is the Hon. Robert J. McCuen, Superintendent of Lamps and Lighting, whose most staggering expletive, even when he sees 100 arc lights go out and 200 lamplighters in liquor, is “dag it.” The Hon. Mr. McCuen is a bachelor.—Adv.