Baltimore Evening Sun (31 October 1912): 6.
The country is now without a Vice-President, but Baltimore has still got one on her hands.--Adv.
The Hon. Murray Vandiver bawling against trick ballots? Quick, quick, Mr. Bartender! A pony of sulphuric acid!
And now it appears that the Hon. Satan Anderson is running away from the Hon. Gene Chafin as fast as Gene is running away from Satan. Let the band play Rubenstein’s Melody in F.
From a political advertisement to the Sunpaper of Tuesday morning:
S. S. Field, Esq.
From another advertisement in the Sunpaper of the same day:
S. S. Field.
From an advertisement in the Sunpaper of this morning:
Hon. S. S. Field.
And so it goes. Day by day the man’s title changes. And not only his, but also the titles of other eminent statesmen. In a single advertisement in today’s Sunpaper, for example, the Hon. Aristides Sophocles Goldsborough appears both as the Hon. A. S. Goldsborough and as A. S. Goldsborough, Esq. In Hollins Hall tomorrow night he will be an Hon., but in Cross Street Hall, an hour later, he will be a mere Esq.
Can it be that these changes are in response to local prejudice, that the patriots who frequent Cross Street Hall are opposed to Hons.? Apparently not, for in that same hall, the Hon. S. S. Field, LL.D., will appear as an Hon. Besides, Hollins Hall is just as much below the dead-line as Cross Street Hall.
Meanwhile, how the deuce did the Hon. Eugene O’Dunne get the title of Hon.? It is given to him once in the Sunpaper of today, twice in the Sunpaper of yeaterday and once in the same able journal of Tuesday, and not once does he appear as Esq. or as plain Gene. Another fellow who is thus constantly buttered to the Hon. W. Cabell Bruce, that pure spirit. But poor Bob Lee has never once been an Hon. in this campaign! Thus the honest workingman is robbed of his rights.
The Hon. Mr. Lee, indeed, is the favorite goat of political advertisers. On October 23, in an advertisement printed in the Hot Towel, he appeared in a list of windjammers as follows:
- Hon. Albert C. Ritchie.
- Hon. Lee S. Myer.
- Hon. Robert H. Carr.
- Hon. Benjamin T. Dickerson.
- Robert E. Lee.
The Republicans and Progressives have done little advertising in this campaign, but whenever theyhave ventured into print they have generously Honed every one of their bawlers. And Col. Joseph R. Baldwin, the Bull Moose treasurer, has signed himself Col. every time. This recalls the habit of the Hon. James Harry Preston, who put up a sign before his headquarters during convention week bearing an Hon. in letters two feet high. I am told, too, though on dubious authority, that he subscribes himself in the same way on city stock.
The Hon. John Philip Hill to the Fairmount Republican Club:
Crime is crime.
The one respectable platitude launched in Baltimore this week. One would fancy that the current spell-binding would bring forth a large and lush crop of platitudes, but not so. All it is actually bringing forth is balderdash. Such garbage does not make platitudes. A platitude must have at least one grain of sense in it.
Vote for Theodore and make sure of a good show! After all, what more can we ask of a President? The theory that he can save us from the wolves, that he can lower the tariff, reduce the high cost of living, bust the trusts and abate the sorrows of the world--all this is merely campaign buncombe, and every sane man knows it. The Hon. Woodrow Wilson, once he is at Washington, will be able to do no more than he has done at Trenton, which is nothing. Presidents do not make laws, nor do they even execute laws. The first is done by Congress and the second, under our absurd system of judicial tyranny, by the courts. There remains, however, a very real job for the successor of George and Abraham: the job, to wit, of entertaining and inflaming the vulgar.
Has the Hon. Mr. Taft given us a good show for our money? Of course he hasn’t. He carries around too much dignity; he is too much oppressed by a sense of his mythical responsibilities. Will Woodrow do any better? I doubt it. He has taught school too long to have any ideas left, and certainly too long to have any seltzer in him. There remains Theodore, a tried and true entertainer, a fellow of infinite energy and resourcefulness, the greatest comedian of modern times. Put him back into office and let the band play again. Once more the Sunpaper of a morning will be worth a cent. Even the Hot Towel, I daresay, will be worth a cent.
No man living understands the American people better than Th. Dentatus Africanus. He knows that they have no intellectual courage, that they shrink instinctively from the real problems of life, that they cling to platitudes as to life buoys. So he ladles out the swill that they like. He is in favor of everything that they think is nice, from pensions to Peruna. He belongs to all parties, sects, lodges, sororities, crusades, jehads and denominations. The few things he is against are the things everybody is against, to wit, the Spaniards, Harry Thaw, anarchism, millionaires, criminal operations, the courts, kidnapping, piracy on the high seas, tobacco chewing, England, the high cost of living, ennui and the truth.
Add to all this normality and hospitality an unfailing sense of the dramatic and you have Theodore. Everything he touches he dramatizes, whether it be a mothers’ meeting or a massacre of Haitiens. Put him back into office and we shall have a war with Mexico within a year, and if not a war with Mexico, then a war with Nicaragua, and if not a war with Nicaragua, then a magnificent and salutary butchery of Federal judges. In any event, a lot of blood will be let, and there will be wind music from dawn to dark, and every American will be able to go to bed at night proud of his country and wild to see the morning papers.
Give Theodore another chance. Life is short. The graves of nine-tenths of us will be dug before 1930. Why not have a high old time while we last? Why not heave all pundits and human rhinoceroses into the discard and enjoy a first-rate show?