Baltimore Evening Sun (31 July 1912): 6.

The gentleman who conducts the murder of the Hon. William Shepard Bryan, Jr., in The Evening Sun Letter Column thus whoops today:

Of course, [the Hon. Mr.] Mencken does not really believe that the plain people * * * are heterodox dissenters. * * * If they were, there would be no * * * Socialists * * * no New Thoughters, no Christian Scientists, no chiropractors. * * *

Does the hon. gent. then maintain that Socialism, the New Thought, Christian Science and chiropractic are orthodox? If so, on what ground?

The present bellowing of City Councilmen over the distribution of jobs gives promise that another “reform” wave is soon to strike the City Hall—that the gentlemen of the Narrenhaus are preparing to be “shocked” once more by the super-Mahon’s too frank helping of kosher contractors and by his other fawks-passes and misdemeanors. ’Twas ever thus from childhood’s happy hour! With half a dozen exceptions, the super-Mahon can “convert” any Councilman he wants with jobs, but when jobs run short as they are running short today, most of those who get left become “reformers.” Soon the angels of the present litter will be bawling against the super-Mahon’s doings and posing as martyrs to good government.

But don’t let them fool you, dear hearts. The truth is that you will always make a mistake when you impute disinterested and worthy motives to the average City Councilman. It would be difficult, indeed, to find a body of men with less sense of civic righteousness, with less regard for the city’s good, with less respect for common fair play, than the normal City Council of Baltimore. Politicians of the most ignorant and vulgar sort invariably control it. They have no intelligible opinion upon the matters they presume to determine: their one hot yearning is to get jobs for their heelers and so make political capital for themselves. If they fight for their wards, it is only to make themselves solid in their wards. If they vote, by any chance, for good legislation or for good men or for reasonable economy, it is only to gain obliquely the favor of the decent newspapers and to stay the yowling of decent people.

Good government in Baltimore, in any genuine sense, will be wholly impossible so long as the City Council exists. As it stands, it is the sworn and incurable enemy of every device for making the public service better or for reducing its cost. Its members, with a few miraculous exceptions, regard the one aim of civilized government as the provision of jobs for numbskulls. Its ideals are those of the ward club and political barroom. Ever since the Civil War, it has been the worst curse of the city, and the worst curse it will remain until it is obliterated root and branch.

Osteopathy and Christian Science: the initiative and referendum of medicine.

Complaint of the estimable Maryland Suffrage News against the Hon. the Sunpaper in the matter of letters to the editor on woman’s suffrage:

If the letter is extremely witty—which, unfortunately, is not always the case—or if it is extremely sarcastic—which, of neecssity, is often the case—they are [it is?] printed, but if they [it?] just contain[s] good, sound suffrage arguments, they are [it is?] invariably cut so as to destroy all of the good points, or they are [it is?] not printed at all.

Moral: don’t be so serious. Nothing is ever accomplished in this world by drawing a long face and posing as a martyr. Hire a couple of comedians and you will get the crowd. The public likes a good-humored and racy show. So hot, indeed, is its thirst for jocosity that it will laugh in any event—and certainly it’s better to be laughed at as Falstaff than to be laughed at as Hamlet.

From an article by the Hon. Fernando Curtis in the esteemed New York Sunpaper:

A great many bartenders are temperate, respectable and intelligent. * * * In the best places they would not be allowed to drink even if they wanted to, and they are likely to hate drink, seeing so much of it * * *

Just and auspicious words. The average bartender is a shrewd and sagacious man, an acute observer of the human comedy, a genial and humane humorist, a good citizen. I have known in my time probably 400 different bartenders, and in the whole lot there have not been 10 who palpably deserved hanging. As soon as that high average of virtue, or even the half of it, is shown by politicians, journalists, corporation directors or Sunday-school superintendents, it will be time enough to send missionaries to the bartenders. As it is, they constitute one of the safest, sanest and most worthy classes of our population. A dishonest or dissolute bartender is as rare as an intelligent City Councilman.

From some Latinist too brave to sign his name:

It were better, far better, Mencken dear, for you to stick to the good old American tongue, the martyred, the magical, than to attempt to quote Latin, and, trusting in your * * * scholarly attainments, scorn to refer to the Latin dictionary. In plain language, it wouldn’t do you no harm to study a little Latin before you display it, believe me. Now don’t blame your error on the typesetter. I’ll bet you a cheap but clean plug of chewing tobacco that you won’t publish this. I’m not mad: are you?

And all this because I wrote quad instead of quod on Tuesday, just as I wrote et for te last week! But meanwhile, I freely acknowledge the corn. All the Latin I know I learned from the late Mike Casey, for many years bartender at the old Carrollton Hotel; but even so, it comforts me to reflect that I make far fewer errors in its use than the average, or even the exceptional, Latinist. Say that this is because I use it less, if you will, but at least grant the fact. If men got one stroke of the bastinado for every error in Latin, I would be able to eat more meals sitting down than any Latinist in Christendom.

The following extract from Vol. XXVII, No. 30, of the Public Health Reports is respectfully referred to the Maryland Antivivisection Society, the sensitive, the sentimental:

Rats are immersed in any convenient antiseptic to kill fleas and other ectoparasites. * * * They are then nailed to a shingle. * * * After being checked, they are dissected by reflecting skin from the whole front of the body and neck so as to expose the cervical, axillary and inguinal cavities, and by opening the thoracic cavities with scissors. * * * The wearing of rubber gloves is not necessary.

Boil your drinking water! Cover your garbage can! Lay in a bundle of shingles for nailing rats!

Contributions toward a thesaurus of American synonyms for money: