Baltimore Evening Sun (24 September 1912): 6.

Some say Harry Wolf done it and some say Al Herford done it, but if you was to ask me, I’d tell you Burns done it.

The gamblers! The gamblers! Each merry fellow lingers, and lays his thumb beside his nose and agitates his fingers!

Headline from the naif and credulous old Sunpaper of September 17:

SHERIFF CASE MONDAY

Assigned For Trial In City Court Before Judge Dawkins.

Oh q, la, la! Oh, la, la, la! Oh, la, la, la, la!

Ungrammatical headline from the oleomaniacal and colytic Hot Towel of the same day:

SHERIFFS’ TRIALS
BEGINS SEPT. 23

ATTORNEY GENERAL POE IS
READY FOR ACTION.

Oh, houchee-coochee! Oh, tickle-tickle! Oh, witch-hazel!

Headline from the still believing Sunpaper of last Sunday:

SHERIFFS’ CASES TOMORROW

Oh , la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la!

No, gents; don’t knock Havre de Grace. Baltimore is no better. For ten or twelve years past I have seen the inside of every effort at good government made in this town, and I can’t recall one that wasn’t opposed desperately by “leading” lawyers, “well-known” business men and other such pious and patriotic follows. I do not refer here to vice crusades, Blue Law crusades and that sort of idle bellowing. I mean only wars against open and obvious evils of government-- evils wholly unnecessary and wholly inexcusable. The “leading” lawyers are usually for the defense. The “well-known” business men are against “agitation.” Their stock argument is that “scandals” hurt buslness.

For all I know, there may be sound logic in this argument. It may be true, as the professional Prominent Baltimoreans allege, that people will not buy dry goods in a town that is trying to put down its grafters. In the last analysis, the Hot Towel may be right and the other newspapers wrong. But, fortunately enough, there are still men in this town who are willing to grant the fact--and then defy it. This is to say, there are men who believe that decency comes before business--men who would rather contribute a mite to civilization than sell a bill of goods by false pretenses.

Such men are not always in a majority. Sometimes they are in a hopeless minority. But when the really hot fight comes they go into it to win, and now and then they do win. If Baltimore is better off today than it was 30 years ago--if the city government, on the whole, is cleaner--if the police are less patently vicious–if grafting is more difficult--if the interest of the people in public affairs is keener and more intelligent--then these men deserve most of the credit. Without their constant aid the newspapers could have done nothing.

Meanwhile, it is important for the people to keep an eye upon all professional “prominent” citizens. Such an enterprise as the current protest against the Havre de Grace debauch tends to bring them out. They are opposed to “agitation”; they denounce “yellow journalism”; they plead eloquently that nothing be done to “hurt business.” Well, let them have their say. Give them their day in court. But don’t forget tomorrow what brand of ethics they are preaching today. In particular, don’t forget it when they run for public office, or advocate runners of their choice and kidney. The leopard, beloved, cannot change his spots. The tails of all the little devils are rooted fast.

From the estimable and usually courtly Democratic Telegram:

How now, good Telegram! Why this offensive distinction, this obtrustve differentiation? What has Sam done that his “honorable” should be taken away from him?

At daylight tomorrow morning the torpedo boat Trippe, of Admiral Frank Furst’s fleet, will sail from Bellais’ Wharf, Marley crick, with Kid Price and his war party. Salisbury will be reached by 6 P. M., and the Kid and his friends will at once go into camp. Young Bellais will be in command, with Kid Cook and Battling Carey as his lieutenants. Young Anderson and his handlers will leave Baltimore tomorrow night. The contumacious Cecil Whig, on the oleomaniacal Hot Towel:

If anything looks bigger than a dollar in the estimation of the American, then we have misjuded it; if anything counts for as much as commercial gain in its controlling policy, then it is badly misunderstood in Maryland.

Away, good Whig; you are ancient and full of bile. The Hot Towel is the loveliest, the purest, the most honorable public gazette in all These States! Has it laid the suave grease upon Doc Munyon, Joe Goeller, the Hotel Royal, the Havre de Grace blacklegs, the fortune-telling Prof. Bunk? Then it is because it reveres and venerates these great men, these eminent public institutions. The Towel would not take a tainted sou. It is the one vestal left in journalism. Its virtue is at once a great passion, a sweet poem and a zymotic disease.

Incidentally, a curse upon that ingrate who lately gave the Towel a shove and bade it hold its grease. For one calendar year, more or less, it attended him daily with its soft ointments, its suave unguents, its balmy oils. Such tallowing the world had never seen! Such prodigies of witch hazel were unprecedented, unprophecied, almost unbelievable! But, alas, the vulgar snickered, and so the customer called time. Today the Towel seeks near and far for a client of sterner stuff. It has a cellar full of tallow, a whole lake of bay rum, a million carboys of tonic. What mountebank will yield his face?

The boomers! The boomers! Again they’re on the mat. And once again they halt the show to pass around the hat!

Meanwhile, the Merchants and Manufacturers’ Association takes off its black gloves long enough to reaffirm its doctrine that the slum is unknown in Baltimore.