Baltimore Evening Sun (4 October 1912): 6.

THE FREE LANCE

Come on, Colonel Pabst! Make good or take the count! We have waited for that Baltimore Munchener so long that our œsophagi are as parchment, yea, as tinder, as soda crackers, as blotting paper.

In the chemical laboratory of the Johns Hopkins Medical School it has just been discovered that at least two at the brands of beer sold in Baltimore will turn litmus paper green. O tempora! O mores!

The eternal rivalry of the platitudinarians:


A PRIZE FOR THE BEST PLATITUDE.

Through the generosity of a Baltimorean who prefers to remain anonymous I am enabled to offer a prize each Saturday for the juiciest platitude launched in Baltimore during the week. The conditions are as follows:


Some of the prizes in stock for later weeks:


Twenty-two head of Havre de Grace deacons, wearing checkerboard suits and vermilion waistcoats, passed through Baltimore yesterday on their way to Laurel.


My spies bring me news, by the way, that the horse-breeding experiments down there are prospering mightily. Over the experiment station of one breeder appears the following sign:

DOLLAR BETS RECEIVED HERE.


Thus the barriers of class privilege are broken down, and the humble and penurious are made welcome by science. A boon to the young. Special attention paid to members of the Greek letter fraternities.


In the ladies’ stand gentlemanly attendants are present to take bets and give advice. Before each race there is much genteel trafficking there. Thus the solemn business of equigenics is mellowed and made romantic by the participation of the fair.


Meanwhile, I also hear that eight of the so-called bookmakers or breeders, hard smitten by bad runs of luck, have already retired for repairs. But let no one take fear from the news: all bets are being paid. At the end of the meeting the society of bookmakers will be perfectly solvent. Solvent--and maybe a bit more.


Proposed inscription for a bronze tablet to be affixed to the front wall of The Sun office.

On this spot
on October 2, A. D. 1912,
the name of
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche,
that amusing nut,
was first spelled correctly
in
an American newspaper.
Nuces relinquere!


Turn to column 4 of page 4 of Tuesday’s Evening Sun and you will see it--N-i-e-t-z-s-c-h-e. Turn to column 6 of the same page and you will see it again. The old order changeth and giveth place to the new. The sun and The Evening Sun do move!


Nietzsche, of course, is often it the papers. Whenever a German baker, poisoned by rice beer, hangs himself in his bakehouse, the prophet of the superman is blamed for it. All anarchists, Mormons, get-rich-quick men, kidnapers. wife-beaters and seducers are denounced as Nietzscheans. The suffragettes accuse Nietzsche of advocating the enslavement of women; the anti-suffragettes accuse him of advocating free love. And the newspapers print and approve both accusations. Nietzsche, as it were, is the goat and symbol or all indecency.


But always the newspapers, the while they lambast him and preach over him, spell his name as he himself never spelled it. It seems to present insuperable difficulties to editorial writers and proofreaders. It always comes out as Nieszche, Nitzsche, Nietsse, Neitzse, Nieitszsche, Nittsy, Niezsche, Neatzsche, Neattsse, Neisztzsze or Nietski.


Always? No more! The Evening Sun has broken the spell. Twice in one issue it has spelled Nietzsche correctly. Let it be remembered in the history of journalism as a daring innovator, an astounding iconoclast, a sublime revolutionary!


Meanwhile, board at Havre de Grace has dropped back to $4 a week, and the clergy of the town feel free again to pummel the devil.


Havre de Grace feels like the small boy who escaped a whaling because his father came home tight and couldn’t find the switch.


Boil your drinking water! Cover your garbage can! Don’t forget to register!


The Hon. J. Pierpont Morgan to the Senate Campaign Contribution Committee, as reported by the estimable Towel:


I know my firm never made no contribution.


For member of the Baltimore School Board, vice Emmons, resigned:

The Hon. J. Pierpont Morgan.


The boomers! The boomers! Again they’re on the mat! And once again they sing a song and pass around the hat!


Last call for the estimable jobhounds to apologize to The Evening Sun for their gross and inexcusable insult.


Puzzle for juriconusults: Which iIs the greater handicap to a lawyer, a hare lip or a conscience?