Baltimore Evening Sun (13 August 1912): 6.
Modest reflection of the Right Hon. the super-Mahon:
We are going to try to put up a monument to Mr. Latrobe, and who knows but what my turn may come, too, 20 years hence?
Twenty years? Nonsense! Why not at once? The super-Mahon will never be more meritorious than he is today. The thing is humanely impossible. He has reached the apex, the zenith, the pinnacle of virtue. If any man in Baltimore, dead or alive, deserves a monument, he is that man. Let us erect it, by all means, and forthwith!
As the only Baltimorean who has ever defended and praised the super-Mahon without hope or desire of reward, as the only one of his admirers who has never tried to get a job from him or a contract or a bank deposit, I claim the privilege of making the first contribution to the monument fund. My check for $1,000 awaits the order of the committee. What is more, I have taken the liberty of asking five Baltimore sculptors to submit designs, and these, too, will be at the service of the committee. What is still more, I presume to suggest that the said committee consist of the following gentlemen:
The Hon. Alexander Geddes (Chairman). The Hon. Paving Bob Padgett. The Hon. S. S. Field, LL. D. The Hon. Bob Lee. The Hon. Alonzo L. Miles. The Hon. Satan Anderson. The Right Hon. Jim Trippe. The Hon. Daniel Joseph Loden. The Hon. Jacobus Hook, K. T. The Hon. Witch Hazel Altfeld, K. T. The Hon. Sol Warfield, H2O. The Hon. Trauty Trautfelter. The Hon. David Stewart. The Hon. McCay McCoy. The Hon. Harry S. Cummings. The Hon. H. L. Mencken (Secretary).
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Will Constant Reader, the Hon. Edward Hirsch, Laparotomist, Cash, J. H. P., the Hon. R. J. Tygert, X. X. X., Health Warden, No Name, Student, Boomer, H. T. W., Ichthyolomaniac, D. D., Suffragist et al kindly send to my office for their cans of sardines? When I offered, the other day, to exchange a copy of Geheimrat Turner’s “Physiology” for a can of sardines, I thought I made it plain that I had but one copy of the book. Naturally enough, that single copy was snapped up instanter. Before The Evening Sun had been upon the street 10 minutes, a delegation of Johns Hopkins men reached Sun Square with a whole case of sardines, and now the book is in the library of the Medical School, cheek by jowl with the first edition of Harvey’s “Exercitato do motu Cordia et Sanguinis in Animalibus” and the famous Syriac palimpsest of Hippocrates on Chilblains. Let the late-comers haul their sardines away. Furthermore, let them cease sending me scurillous notes. I made my offer in good faith and I carried it out in good faith. Let these who delayed now apply to the geheimrat himself.
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Boil your drinking water! It is chemically pure, of course, and any man who says otherwise is a scoundrel--but boil it nevertheless! Also, cover your garbage can! Again, look out for Burns!
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State’s Attorney the Hon. Charles Seymour Whitman of New York city on the chase of the Rosenthal murderers and police grafters:
The Mayor did nothing but talk about corrupt newspapers. * * *
And meanwhile those newspapers helped the Hon. Mr. Whitman to collect evidence. Of the ten men now under arrest two were captured by the police under the direction of the Mayor. The other eight were tracked down by the Hon. Mr. Whitman and the newspapers. On the very day that the Mayor denounced the newspapers as public enemies and ordered Commissioner Waldo to keep Lieutenant Decker on duty the newspapers printed evidence which will probably send Decker to the chair.
Sad days, these, for the zeitung-hounds! You all recall the late William Lorimer’s staggering denunciation of the Chicago Tribune on the floor of the Senate. How he rocked and raked the Tribune for charging falsely that he had been elected by bribery! How eloquently he howled against the newspaper plot to ruin him! And perhaps you also remember that, while he was in the very act of discharging his hot rhetoric, two Illinois Legislaturemen were confessing that they had voted for him for cash in hand!
Again, consider the case of the Hon. Cole L. Blease, of South Carolina, another dashing foe to a heinous and horrendous press. Some of the terms applied by the Hon. Mr. Blease to newspapers scoundrelly enough to tackle him:
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September 29, 1909.--Three of the ex-sheriffs enter exceptions to the State’s answer to their demand for a bill of particulars. November 28, 1910.--The court overrules the exceptions.
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The Hon. the super-Mahon to the jobhounds:
Four other gentlemen in nomination received fewer votes than I for the Vice-Presidency.
So they did: the delegates were less sorry for them. But don’t overlook the fact that they, at least, have had the grace to shut up. The discussion of the Crime of July 2 was closed by the decent newspapers of Baltimore on July 3: they were glad enough to have done. It was reopened by the literary agents of the super-Mahon on July 13. It has been continued by the super-Mahon ever since. Why not try to forget it?
Certainly, its contiuual discussion can do no good. The allegation that the decent newspapers “maliciously misrepresented the occurrences at the Convention at the time of my being out in nomination” (Vide the Message, p. 10) deceives no one who was there--and 10,000 Baltimoreans were there. These persons, I have no doubt, read the papers next day, but so far I have heard no complaint from them of “malicious misrepresentation,” nor of any other sort of misrepresentation. If such misrepresentation has ever got into either the Sunpaper or the Evening Sun I shall be very glad to hear of it. What is more, I shall be glad to correct, denounce and apologize for it in this place. What is still more, I shall either get an apology for it from the man directly responsible for it or post him publicly as a slanderer and an ass.