Baltimore Evening Sun (29 July 1912): 6.

{illustration} Court Circular Padgett Palace, July 27. A chapter of the Most Noble Order of the Feather has been called for Tuesday, July 30. The Grand Master, Lieut.-Col. the Hon. Jacobus Hook, K. T., will preside, and there will be a full attendance of Knights Ticklers. His Majesty has been graciously pleased to intimate that he will favor the Chapter with his presence. A number of Esquires will be elevated to full knighthood. The Earl of Padgette, K. T., is in constant attendance upon his Majesty as Spiritual Adviser. The Right Hon. Daniel Joseph Loden, Master of the Royal Jobhounds, has been granted quarters in the Palace and will remain in attendance upon his Majesty. The Right Hon. Trauty Trautfelter, Honorary Colonel of the Yoeman at the Guard, was received by his Majesty and had the honor of kissing hands.

Dear old Williams, the Christian Science press agent, smites me with a bladder in today’s Letter Column—and then leaps behind his theological breastworks. Not the most valiant form of slugging, perhaps, but nevertheless I can’t kill my ancient affection for the man. Meanwhile, the news that “God is the only Healer in Christian Science” may perhaps give pause to those patients who are now yielding up their mazuma to palpably human healers. And meanwhile, dear Williams, I am hot foot after those Memphis statistics, and if they are not to be had in Memphis, I shall get them from the statistical studies of the Merchants and Manufacturers’ Association.

Startling reflection of the Hon. Francis Place, friend to Bentham and Mill:

The common people must ever be imbecile when not encouraged and supported by others who have money and influence.

From a bitter diatribe in the estimable Hot Towel of today:

No reputable newspaper of this country has charged that Taft was nominated by fraud, chicanery or unclean methods or means.

Definition of a “reputable” newspaper, per Towel: One that has never charged that Taft was nominated by fraud, chicanery, or unclean methods or means.

More moral stuff from that same super-bilious article:

The man who is an accessory to a crime is equally guilty as the receiver or the perpetrator of the crime.

But always excepting, of course, the Crime of July 2, 1912, that day of fate, that night of gore and weeping.

Nothing could be more affecting than the morality of corporations. First the United Railways prohibits smoking on its pay-as-you-enter cars on the ground that the use of tobacco is an offensive vice, and then the Pennsylvania Railroad stops the sale of liquor on its trains. Score two for virtue. Let the pious tears fall until they match in bulk the water in the stock of this pair of chemically pure octupi. A curse upon the scoffer who talks of Harrisburg and Annapolis!

Every virtuoso of virtue will take double delight in these orders, for they not only prohibit two vices of the unregenerate, but they also prohibit those vices where they are most delightful and salubrious. There is no time, indeed, when most men feet more like smoking than when they ride on a crowded street car and no time when they feel more like drinking than when they are marooned on a slow, dirty and uncomfortable train. At such times tobacco and alcohol ease the troubled mind and give comfort to the body. Therefore, it is especially satisfying to ban them.

I speak here with perfect seriousness. Nothing could be more profoundly true than the old saying that the New England Puritans prohibited bear-baiting, not because it hurt the bear, but because it pleased the spectator. Puritanism is not opposed to cruelty; on the contrary, it is firmly grounded on cruelty. Its moving impulse is a desire to torture the other fellow, to make him stop doing the things he likes to do. Whether those things injure him or benefit him is unimportant. The essential thing is that he enjoys them. That is all the moralist wants to know.

Hence the endless campaign against the Sunday resorts at Back River. It cannot be maintained that the sports there engaged in hurt the participants, or that they annoy other persons, for no other persons are within five miles, but it can be maintained that they are vastly enjoyed, and so the virtuosi of virtue are opposed to them. Some of these virtuosi live 10 miles away and have never visited Back River in their lives. Not one of them, if he minded his own business, would ever have the slightest reason to complain of the doings there on Sunday. But the news that multitudes are gay goes forth, and so we have militant efforts to put down the scandal.

So with the cocaine crusade of four or five years ago. The virtue of cocaine was that it made a loutish blackamoor, but one degree removed from an orang-outang, believe that he was a white angel with silver wings and $400 in the bank. In brief, it gave him pleasure. Therefore, a cry was raised against it and its sale was prohibited.

Not that this reason was frankly stated. Far from it, indeed. Cocaine was chiefly attacked, not on the ground that it gave the blackamoor joy, but on the ground that it hurt him, Well, suppose it did hurt him? Suppose it even killed him? What of it? He was useless before he began to take it, and he was useless after he stopped taking it. If cocaine actually hastened his exitus, then the obvious duty of the police was to supply it to him free of charge.

Another argument advanced against cocaine was that it made the tough darky tougher and tended to corrupt the decent darky. But no evidence appeared in support of that theory. The cocainized moor, once he was emptied of cocaine, went back to gin. And the decent darky continued to steer clear of both. The truth is that the respectable colored people of Baltimore were no more seduced by cocaine than the respectable white people. All of its votaries, white and black, belonged to the lowest caste of semi-human wallowers—ths caste that the rest of us have to support.

But enough of this fascomating subject. Say what you will against cocaine, it was never so dangerous in its palmy days as fake Pilsener is today. The latter is consumed by and so injures our most useful men. Unless something is done to stop its sale, there will be a swift and lamentable degeneration of our whole population, mentally and physically, and Baltimore will go the way of Nineveh and Tyre.