Baltimore Evening Sun (9 November 1912): 6.

THE FREE LANCE

Honest advice to the Hon. the Archangel Harry: Beware of a small man with a vermilion beard, answering to the name of the Hon. D. Bachrach.--Adv.

Signs of a reviving oleaginousness are visible in the good old Towel. It has applied the humane goose grease to its Most August Customer no less than three times since Black Tuesday, and this morning it lathers and witch hazels the Hon. Sonny Mahon con amore. Sonny’s artless speech, so rich in synecdoche, in metonymy and in what Walter Pater calls the gypsy phrase, is translated into the sonorous quasi-English of the Towel, and he is made out to be the rhetorical peer of Col. Jacobus Hook, the Hon. S. S. Field, LL. D., and the Hon. Hon. Arisophocles Goldsborough, those subtle seducers of the higher cerebral centres. Such is tallowing! Such is the art lubricant! Lay on, Tartuffe, and damned be him who first cries Hold, Enough!

The soughing and shrilling of the platitudes:

THE PLATITUDE PRIZE.

The platitude prize of the week, a white crape waistcoat with blue immortelles for buttons, is awarded to the Right Hon. the Archangel Harry for the following:

The old saying is that figures never lie.

And the committee makes honorable mention of the Hon. John J. Mahon for the following:

Figures speak for themselves.

These two platitudes are so nearly equal in merit that the committee had great difficulty in deciding between them. It is still in some doubt, indeed, as to the justice of its award, and so it makes the recommendation that, while the waistcoat be given into the care and custody of the Hon. Mr. Harry, the right to wear it on Sundays and legal holidays be accorded to the Hon. Mr. Mahon in perpetuity. Next week’s prize will be a gallon jug of narcotic witch hazel, vanilla flavor, from the famous laboratories of the Hot Towel.

After all, why shouldn’t Sonny wear Harry’s vest? Harry has long worn Sonny’s coat.

The Hon. Charles M. Levister, suffragan and chorepiscopus to the Right Hon. Satan Anderson, fills the Sunpaper of this morning with local option poppycock. A few days ago, as connoisseurs of the dialectic will recall, some bilious Prohibitionist supplied the Sunpaper with figures showing that the per capita consumption of liquor in the United States has increased from 16 to 23 gallons a year since the local option foolishness began. In answer to this the Hon. Mr. Levister brings forward figures to show that the production of malt and hard liquor has decreased in all of the dry States and increased in all of the wet States.

Well, who denies it? Of course, the production of liquor has decreased in the dry States, for in many of them distilleries have been torn down and breweries have been turned into Chautauquas. But how about the consumption? What reason is there to believe that it has decreased materially, or even at all? Not the slightest. The hot esophagi of the drys are still flooded with copious freshets of corn juice, synthetic grape, and picric acid. It is still possible, in nine dry towns out of ten, to get a all known brands.of whisky and beer. And in most of them the ordinary armamentarium of bibbing has been reinforced by a host of new and unearthly wolves in sheep’s clothing--near-beers, “malt” whiskies, “nerve tonics” and other such poisons.

Naturally enough, there has been an increase in production in the wet States. Before the days of local option, the distilleries and breweries of these States confined themselves in the main to supplying their local markets. But now they must brew and distill enough, not only for their own people, but also for the people of the dry States. No wonder their chimneys belch smoke! And no wonder they have been reinforced--as in Maryland, for example--by the fugitive booze works of the dry States!

Such is local option, virtuous in appearance, but wholly vicious in substance. The Hon. Mr. Levister may tell us that the dry States are really dry, just as the Hon. Samuel E. Pentz, the Vice Crusader, tells us that Chicago and Los Angeles are pure, but every sane man knows that such evidence is bogus and ridiculous, and the men who bring it forward are well aware of it. A few months ago, you may remember, I quoted a little article from the estimable Ledger- Enterprise, the leading newspaper of Pocomoke City, a dry town of the Eastern Shore. This article recorded the arrival of 65 barrels of beer and near-beer in one day--in a town of less than 2,500 population.

The more Harry argues that the stoneheads did their darndest last Tuesday the more he hints that they did a little more than their darndest in May, 1911. The time has almost come, indeed, for him to tell us just what he thinks of the election of 1911. Is he willing to make a public statement on his word of honor as a white man that he believes he was honestly elected? If so, it will be a pleasure to give him space for it. And if he himself is reluctant to commit himself will the Hon. S. S. Field, LL. D., or the Hon. McCay McCoy, C. E., or the Hon. Jacobus Hook, K, T., or some other confidante come to the bat? I do not ask for oaths; all I want it; the witness’ word of honor.

The Old Town Merchants, having tasted blood, now talk contumaciously of limiting Col. Jacobus Hook’s future speeches to two hours.--Adv.

From the Hot Towel’s report of the speech of Mrs. Imogene Oakley, foe of noise, before the Women’s Civic League:

She told her hearers that newsboys are not allowed on Piccadilly, the Strand, Regent street and other aristocratic thoroughfares in London.

But no doubt those pilgrims who have been stormed by newsboys in the Strand will be even more surprised by the news that Piccadilly is an aristocratic thoroughfare, say after 9 P. M.

It may be true, as Harry says, that he is chock full of brains, but brains don’t seem to make a good loser. Did you ever hear a man bellow so loudly when stuck?--Adv.