Baltimore Evening Sun (11 November 1912): 6.

The super-Mahon: a man entirely surrounded by gentlemen who know exactly what he wants.

Reasons for staying away from the Auditorium during Mlle. Gaby Deslys’ engagement:

• 1. She appears in tights.
• 2. She sings very Frenchy songs.
• 3. She helped Don Manuel of Portugal to lose his throne.
• 4. She hasn’t been to Sunday-school for 24 years.
• 5. She doesn’t care a hoot who knows it.

Reasons for going to see her:

See the above.

From the Hot Towel’s report of Rabbi Stephen S. Wise’s address at Bolton Street Temple:

The real enemy to the city is the muck-raker.

What he really said, as reported by the Sunpaper:

The man to be dreaded in a democracy is not the muck-raker, but the muck-maker.

Ah, the thoughtful, the careful, the tactful, the prudent, the courtly Towel!

Meanwhile, it would be interesting if the trustees of Goucher would tell us just where it is going in case Baltimore refuses to put up the guarantee fund. Again, what assurance is there that the same threat of desertion will not be made again later on? Once the college gets its million it will begin to grow, and once it begins to grow it will need more money. Is it the theory of the trustees that Baltimore should raise 70 per cent. of the whole cost of operating a school which pretends to represent the second largest religious denomination in the United States, with members to every village in the land?

Much is made of the fact that Goucher is no longer purely sectarian, that it admits students of all faiths and has ceased to force upon them the peculiar ethical views of its founders. But the fact must not be forgotten, in mitigation of the present apathy, that those views were enforced until very recently and that they seemed outrageous to many perfectly intelligent and decent people. If the memory of old irritations is now counting against the college, let the blame be put where it belongs. Any institution which presumes to criticize, as dangerous to morals, the acts of persons who are themselves conscious of no immorality, is apt to find itself without their support when it gets into trouble.

All this in defense of the people of Baltimore. For five or six years past a hat has been constantly before them. They have been asked to contribute lavishly to the support of two or three educational institutions, three or four hospitals and innumerable other benign enterprises. Is it fair now to denounce them if they balk a bit? I think not. They have given as much, in proportion to their means, as any other people in Christendom, and certainly they are within their rights when they resent the use of pressure upon them.

The gentlemanly rivalry of the platitudinarians:

• A man who has been imprisoned is still a man.--The Right Rev. Samuel Fallows, D. D.
• No man can escape rent.--The Hon. John Salmon.
• The selection and election of our public officials is public business of the very highest importance.--The Hon. W. O. Owen.
• The old days are passing.--Mrs. Maud Ballington Booth.
• No man will go to a physician so long as he believes he is in perfect health.--The Rev. Dr. Polemus H. Swift.

And the more the Hon. William H. Anderson thinks of the vote polled by Wet Hope Chafin the more he larfs and larfs.–Adv.

All that remains for the super-Mahon is to send another hot message to the Job Hounds. But let us all hope that he will make this next one really hot. If he wants spicy evidence against members of the staff of the Sunpaper, let him come to me. There is, for example, the dark green past of Henry Edward Warner, a robher of apple orchards at the age of 7. And the Bentztown Bard, so I hear, once shot a yearling calf with an air rifle. And I myself was expelled from Sunday-school for simony.--Adv.

Advocates of the true, the good and the beautiful have at me in today’s Letter Column for lately reviling the Vice Crusade. Unluckily, my skull is too flinty to be penetrated by the soft- nosed projectiles thus discharged at it. For example, there is the Hon. J. W. B., who first quotes my allegation that the prostitute’s “means of escape are many * * * and whenever she is so inclined she duly escapes,” and then asks piously ilf “a little assistance” wouldn’t help her. Well, I suppose it would, though she can get away if she wants to without it. But what sort of assistance do the virtuosi of virtue offer? On the one hand, they “assist” the poor girl by trying to prove that she is a criminal, and as bad as a child-stealer or a politician, and on the other hand they “assist” her by trying to transform her, usually against her honest theological beliefs and in violation of her self-respect, into a convict in a pious stockade and an awful example for Sunday-school scholars. No wonder she shows such an ardent disinclination to accept such “help.”

Again, there is my good friend, the Rev. Dr. Romilly Humphries, with his plea for idealism, and his able demonstration of its uses. Let me grant those uses at once: all progress would be impossible without the vision and the hope. But there are ideals and ideals, some in close contact with reality, such as the ideal of a race free from typhoid, and some wholly nebulous and fantastic, such as the ideal of a race free from liars. It seem to me that the ideal of the Vice Crusaders belongs to the latter category. In brief, they are impossibilists--and impossibilists are the worst of all imaginable foes to progress.

The social evil, I am thoroughly convinced, can be vastly ameliorated, at least in its effects. The chance for improvement is so apparent, indeed, that it must arouse the interest of every thoughtful man. But as the first means to that improvement there must be a frank recognition of facts as they are, and one of those facts is that the thing itself is wholly resistent to anathema. It has been damned in vain for thousands of years, and remains today substantially as it always was. If we are to deal with it with any hope of success, we most first admit the overwhelming probability of its indefinite survival, and confine ourselves to combatting its baleful consequences and the worse evils hanging ’round it.

The more Col. Jacobus Hook thinks of what happened to Harry on Tuesday, the more he feels like retiring to Munich, shaving his head and entering a Waisenhaus.--Adv.

Boil your garbage can! Cover your drinking water!- Watch the high cost of living fall!

And the Towel blubbers “Foul” and goes back to Doc Munyon!–Adv.