Baltimore Evening Sun (25 November 1912): 6.

Col. Jacobus Hook is already sending out subscription blanks for “The World in Munich” next year.—Adv.

The Sunday music of the platitudinarians:

• Marriage * * * is the greatest business in the world.—The Rev. Dr. Edward B. Bagby.
• Indecent fashions in dress tend to destroy modesty.—The Rev. Dr. O. C. S. Wallace.
• War is bad enough.—The Rev. Dr. Polemus H. Swift.
• Sin cannot be overcome by using Pears’ soap or Heintz’s pickles.—The Rev. Dr. T. C. Mitchell.

THE HON. MR. PENTZ TAKES PLATITUDE PRIZE.

Last week’s prize for the best platitude launched in Baltimore in seven days has been awarded to the Hon. Samue. F. Pentz, LL.B., camerlengo and kappelmeister of the Vice Crusade, for the following:

Evil is evil.

The committee makes honorable mention of the Hon. Thomas Francis Farnan, prefect of police, for the following:

Ideas as to what constitutes manly beauty differ.

And of the Right Hon. Phillips Lee Goldsborough, Field Marshal, Commanding, M. N. G., for the following:

The farmer feeds the world.

The prize, an Edam cheese wrapped in tinfoil, will be forwarded to the prize-winner tomorrow, and similar cheeses will be given as consolation prizes to all other contestants. This week’s prize will be a miniature American flag mounted upon a goose feather, suitable for wearing in the hat.

The Concord Club is in favor of the paving tax. No streets out in the West End ain’t been paved yet.—Adv.

From the story of a suicide in this morning’s Hot Towel.

Sitting with his wife and children around a glowing fire in the parlor of his home * * * last Saturday midnight, talking of the long winter ahead, Patrolman —— ———, of the Eastern Police district, kept asking himself what kept his eldest son, Frederick, out so late.

Frederick * * * was 17 years old. A tall, handsome youth, with a luxurious crop of jet black hair, he was his parents’ hope and pride. The boy was often late but usually he reached home as the clock struck 12.

When 1 o’clock passed with still no sign of their child, a sudden chill of foreboding was felt by his anxious father. Suddenly the conversation ceased abruptly as Patrolman —— ——— held up a warning finger. “Hist!” he exclaimed. “What was that?”

“It sounded as if some one was trying the back gate,” answered George, the second son, as he rose from his chair and darted for the door.

“Who is there?” demanded young ——— as he peered straight ahead of him into the inky night. George ran forward and a cry of horror broke from his lips as the moonlight fell across the agonized features of his brother Fred. The recognition was mutual, and the older brother, gasping for breath, exclaimed:

“My God, George, I have taken carbolic acid!” As he spoke he lurched forward * * *

A perfect specimen of the Towel’s famous pathetic style. During the last year or two connoisseurs have sorely missed that unctuous, juicy stuff, that note of Salvation Army eloquence. The Towel’s talented young reporters have been too busy greasing a Certain Party to give much attention to any gentler, less profitable art. But now that the Party has ordered the goose grease mortars to cease firing, there is hope for a renaissance of rhetorical sobbing.

Some brave rhetorician, discreetly withholding his name, tries to scare me to death in today’s Letter Column by raising the dirty banner of racial and religious prejudice. It was to be expected: some such exquisite tear-squeezer was bound to thrust himself into the current discussion of the social evil. I make my appeal from him to all honest and fair-minded men. I have said nothing against the immigrant as such, and I have nothing to say against him. All I do say is that the immigrant who, with fourscore respectable streets to choose from, moves his wife and family next door to a disorderly house is either a very stupid or a very degraded man, and probably both. Prostitution is an institution that is not confined to the United States. It exists throughout Christendom and its outward signs are familiar and unmistakable. The man who doesn’t know those signs is an ignoramus, and the man who doesn’t heed them is worse.

Personally, I have no sympathy with either man. The sort of fellow who lives cheek by jowl with prostitution is the very fellow who ought to live there. It is the merit of segregation that it enables him to make his free choice. It is the defect of dispersion that it exposes more decent men to a hazard they do not deserve and cannot easily meet. That, in brief, is the case against the proposed woman-hunt.

The Concord Club would hire an artist to make a hand-painted picture of a Certain Party, but no room in its clubhouse ain’t big enough to hang one big enough.—Adv.

The estimable Democratic Telegram on the Right Hon. Robert J. McCuen:

The only fault to be found with Mr. McCuen is that he remains a bachelor.

Bosh! The fact that the Hon. Mr. McCuen remains a bachelor is his chief glory, the one supreme testimony to his merit, his unescapable claim to immortality. A hundred other men could manage the city lighting of Baltimore just as well an he does, taking account each night of lights gone out, providing innumerable lamp-post anchorages for gentlemen in liquor, presenting endless claims for rebates and damages to the immoral Gas Company. But not one man in ten thousand, I.believe, could resist successfully the matrimonial pressure to which he is constantly exposed. With more than 700 schoolmarms, grass widows, suffragettes, prima donne, mental healers, lady embalmers, policewomen, manicure girls, milkmaids and actorines incessantly on his trail, each armed with a license and a preacher, and each sure to spring upon him at the first faint sign of weakness, he pursues unruffled his lordly existence a capella, rich. happy, unafraid. A sublime, a noble creature! The last great bachelor of a decadent and withering race!

If the Hon. William H. Anderson had a little more sporting blood, he would open a bottle of wine for every vote that Wet Hope Chafin got in Baltimore.—Adv.

Boil your drinking water! Cover, your garbage can! Laugh, suckers, laugh!

Anyhow, no matter what you say, you don’t want to forget how Col. Jacobus Jook done up Toner.mdash;Adv.