Baltimore Evening Sun (20 September 1912): 6.

The boomers! The boomers! This heart of mine it pines to see them on the job again of starting steamship lines!

The Hon. Edgar Allan Poe, in The Evening Sun of yesterday:

The mere fact that the legislature did not know or understand what they were passing is not sufficient ground upon which to declare a law invalid.

In other words, the chance that the law we are asked to respect was made by jackasses, probably more than half drunk, is one of the inevitable risks and burdens of democracy.

Jake was treated a darn sight better in Munich that what he has been treated lately in Old Town.

Lithocaput, n, a stonehead, an osseocaput petrified.

The Hon. William S. Norris, president of the Peabody Heights Improvement Association, on the smoke nuisance along the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad’s open cut:

A fine of $500 can be imposed for every day the company neglects the * * * agreement [to use electric motors]. It can be collected by the city by suit.

That is to say, it could be collected if the company had no lawyers and if there were no courts to stand between a harsh law and its enforcement. As it is, let the Hon. Mr. Norris dream no roseate dreams. The Baltimore and Ohio will never pay that fine. If, by any chance, it ever does, I hereby agree to visit the lodgeroom of the Peabody Heights Improvement Association and cut my throat for the amusement of the members.

If only the stoneheads of the City Council would wear tights and green whiskers, the Gayety and Empire would go down and out.--Adv.

Good old Doc Tinthoff, dean and wiskinski of the American College of Mechano- Therapy, of 91 West Randolph street, Chicago, is determined to get me on his roll of medical freedomists, dead or alive. All he asks now, by way of matriculation fee, is the small sum of $1. Once be wanted $37 down, but that was more than a year ago. Since then, as I have bashfully held off, his yearning to snatch me has augmented and heated up, and so he has gradually cut his terms, as the following table shows:

• 1911.
• July 17—$100 cash, or $37 cash and $23 a month for 3 months, or $24 cash and $14.50 a month for 6 months.
• August 12—$50 cash, or $18.50 cash and $11.50 a month for 3 months, or $12 cash and $7.25 a month for 6 months.
vv
• September 9—The offer of August 12 repeated.
• October 9—$47 cash, or $4 cash and $6 a month for 8 months.
• November 9—$25 cash, or $5 cash and $5 a month for 2 months.

• 1912.
• May 13—$25 cash, or $3 cash and $8 a month for 8 months.
• June 5—The offer of May is repeated.
• July 16—The offer of June 5 is repeated.
• September 16—$25 cash, or $1 down, $2 in 10 days and $3 a month for 8 months.

For this single dollar of his last offer the Doc offers to send me “our Copyrighted Lessons Nos. 1 & 2, our magnificent complete set of Eight Grouped Lithographed Anatomical and Physiological Charts, 22½ by 30½ Inches, beautifully lithographed in colors, with Manual fully explaining same; also our special Chart, 19 by 32 inches in size, showing illustrations of a number of the principal Mechano-Therapeutic Manipulations.” Says he:

You can keep the Lessons, Charts, Manual, etc., for ten days, go carefully over them at your leisure, and If you think you would like to continue with our Correspondence Course in Mechano-Therapy, you can send us $2 more, and then pay us $3 per month for eight consecutive months, or until you have paid us $27 in all. * * * Understand, the $27 covers the ENTIRE cost of ALL Lessons, Charts, Manual, Special Charts, Diagrams, correction of Lessons, Special Letters of advice, in fact EVERYTHING. * * * There are NO EXTRAS OF ANY KIND for text books, etc. In fact, in addition to the above we will, on graduation, present you with our two text books on Osteopathy and Chiripractic (regular selling price $2.50).

Mechano-Therapy, says the Doc, is going ahead daily. The people of the United States bawl for medical freedom. In part, of course, they are satisfied by Peruna, Christian Science, osteopathy, chiropratic and the Emmanuel Movement, but mechano-therapy is so much better than any of these that it wins hands down. As for the old-line physicians, crammed with the buncombe of the Johns Hopkins and other such slaughter-houses, they are on the run:

The Grafting, Dope-giving Doctors and Faking Surgeons who operate unnecessarily and FOR MONEY ONLY have imposed on their poor dupes to such an alarming extent that the leading publications of this country have taken up the fight against them. * * * The broadest exposure of these fakers and grafters has * * * driven the public to heartily welcome such a sane, up-to-date, HARMLESS healing system as Mechano-Therapy.

Nevertheless, I still hold off–at least for a while. The Doc has come down from $37 to $1. I live in hopes that he may go to 15 cents next month.

The Hon. Fred. Wright, chief foe to the Mayor’s sewer rental plan, hatchets me in today’s Letter Column, but luckily without fatal effect. To lay sewer rentals upon the churches and the B. & M Building, he argues, would be folly, for the money thus raised would be more than balanced by the money lost in not taxing the Munsey Building. So far, so good. But doesn’t the Hon. Mr. Wright forget the $44,531,104 worth of suburban and so-called rural property? Under the sewer rental plan this property would pay a fair price for the service it got. Under the direct taxation plan it would get its sewers almost free, and city real estate would have to pay for them. Does the Hon. Mr. Wright argue that this would be fair?

Say what you will against the Concord Club, it don’t never put it to Dan the way them Old Town Merchants put it to Jake.

The silent pulpits of Havre de Grace will be occupied on Sunday by the clergy who are attending the current synod of the Horse Breeders’ Association. Those who will preach and their subjects follow:

• The Rev. Pretzel-Eared Sweeney, the converted White Slaver: “The Perils of Sin.”
• The Rev. Mike the Wreck, D.D.: “Cashing In.”
• The Rev. SureThing Sol: “Hospitality.”
• The Rev. Set-Em-Up Smith: “What of the Dope?”
• The Rev. Louie the Lush: “Is it Wrong to Take a Chance?”

From an Associated Press report of an execution at Auburn Prison:

He was plainly annoyed * * * when he was forcibly shoved into the chair.

Well, who wouldn’t be? There should be a suaver, a softer, a more gentlemanly etiquette on such occasions.

The boomers! The boomers! Hurrah, they’re coming back! And soon they’ll toot the ophecleide and give the drum a whack!