Baltimore Evening Sun (7 October 1912): 6.

[From the ingenuous Evening Sun of August 1 last.]

MILLION-DOLLAR BANK TO AID CITY’S TRADE ---- Industrial Institution To Loan Funds To Buy Stocks.

Dust to dust! Ashes to ashes! We’re here today and gone tomorrow!

The estimable Democratic Telegram, replying to my forceful and cogent arguments for granting the feudal title of “honorable” to the Hon. Samuel Summers Field, LL.D., makes answer in its current issue with a quibble worthy of a Baltimore lawyer. Thus:

Mr. Field never hold the post of Attorney-General in either administration of Mr. [William Jennings] Bryan. It is true that he was offered this high honor, and it is also true that, when he declined it, Mr. Bryan begged him, with tears in his eyes, to accept the higher post of Secretary of State. But Mr. Field would have none of it.

Does such sophistry require rebuttal? Can it be that the editor of the Democratic Telegram is so unversed in Constitutional law that he doesn’t know that the offer of a job, if bona fide, carries with it exactly the same honors as the acceptance of a job? Honors are not material things, like uniforms or wages. They are ineffable and transcendental things. Whether or not a man accepts such a post as that of Attorney-General of the United States is a minor matter. The important thing is that it has been offered to him, that it has been freely conferred upon him, that he has been definitely chosen as one worthy of it.

As the editor of the Telegram openly admits, this honor was conferred upon the Hon. Mr. Field by the Hon. Mr. Bryan. Therefore, the Hon. Mr. Field is fully entitled to the style or appellation of “honorable”--as much an as the Hon. Charles Joseph Bonaparte, who accepted with gusto when the Hon. Theodore Roosevelt conferred the same honor on him. Six of one and half a dozen of the other. I myself bear the title of “Hon.,” not because I have ever held public office, but simply because I was once offered public office--because the Hon. Dan Loden, a year and a half ago, offered me a box of Pennsylvania cigars if I would consent to serve as City Councilman from the Nineteenth ward. I declined and some other follow was named--but the honor stuck, and only the waters of the Styx will ever purge me of it.

Oh, the platitude’s red glare, as it bursts in the air:

• Human nature, like the poor, is ever with us.–Mr. Wegg.
• The Ten Commandments are not sectarian.--The Rev. Dr. Charles L. Read.
• The hungry boy can be satisfied only with material food.--The Rev. Dr. Polemus H. Swift.
• A young man, by spending all his earnings on himself, * * * can dress better * * * than if he were supporting a wife and children.–The Rev. Dr. O. C. S. Wallace.
• No woman works because she wants to.--A correspondent of the Sunpaper.
• The automobile came into use some years ago. They are not only used as pleasure vehicles but also for business.–The Hon. John Hubert.
• Advertisement.--The Hot Towel.

VALUABLE PRIZES FOR PLATITUDES.

Through the generosity of a wealthy Baltimorean who prefers to remain anonymous, I am enabled to offer a weekly prize for the loveliest, juiciest platitude launched in Baltimore during the week. The competition is open to Prominent Baltimoreans, leading lawyers, public officials, Old Subscribers, newspaper editors and clergymen in good repute. The prize-winner will be announced every Saturday. This week’s prize is a pair of honorary pallbearers’ gloves. Next week: a pound of prunes.

Apropos of nothing whatever, various judicious thoughts on slang suggest themselves. Slang is verbal shorthand. The very same definition answers for metaphor. The poet says the damsel he thirsts for is a rose; the car conductor says she is a peach. Each, in his separate way, tries to reduce a long description to a single word, to find a new short cut in language. The difference between the two figures is a difference which lies in their authors more than in the figures themselves. Metaphor is the slang of a man respected; slang is the metaphgor of a man not respected. Shakespeare’s “There’s the rub” is an idea arising out of the fact that a tight shoe is uncomfortable and causes corns. In other words, it suggests a fact as disagreeable and as vulgar as any lying at the back of a phrase of modern slang. But the world respects Shakespeare, and therefore it is willing to respect, too, at least to some extent, his vulgarity. In the same way it respects the warts of Abraham Lincoln, the mountebankeries of Wagner and the boorishness of Beethoven. If King Edward VII had eaten with his knife, eating with the knife would be viewed with respect today. But the car conductor is not respected very actively, and in consequence nothing that he says or does is respectable, even though its essential respectability may be obvious. We laugh at him when he uses slang, but we would still laugh at him if he tried to use the speech of Macaulay.

Everybody who is anybody in Havre de Grace is now wearing jewelry, and most of it is bogus.--Adv.

Proposed attractions to the Michaelmas semester in the plaza de toros:

Kid Wright vs. McCay-McCoy. Knockout Toner vs. the Terrible Hook. Kid Price vs. Doc Carroll. Mike Fahey vs. Young Harry Wolf. Young Ritchie vs. Gunpowder Sol.

Young Anderson, by the way, is overlooking many bets. Why doesn’t he challenge the Hon. Murray Vandiver? Or Col. Jacobus Hook? Or the Hon. Aristides Sophocles Goldsborough?

All of the boys are afraid of Young Anderson. It will be next to impossible to find a Wet Hope. Well, why not match him with a boa constrictor?

The boomers! The boomers! Upon the scene they hobble! And soon they’ll fill the autumn air with tuneful slobber-gobble!

Boil your drinking water! Cover your garbage can! Get ready for the tax man!

The Vice Crusade! The Vice Crusade! Oh, macaroons and lemonade!