Baltimore Evening Sun (26 November 1912): 6.

The super-Mahon and the super-tax! Larf, suckers, larf!

A glimpse of the charming little Hansa Haus, at Charles and German streets, now nearing compltion:

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Observe the sign on the wall of the Phœnix Building. The dominant colors of this sign are a bilious yellow and a dirty blue. It is one of the most hideous signs in Baltimore, and its hideousness is augmented by the fact that it is now half covered, and thus unintelligible. And yet it remains there, staring down upon Charles street, killing the Hansa Haus, affronting every civilized wayfarer. Let us admire, gents, the public spirit which preserves it.

Col. Jacobus Hook is against the paving tax, but in favor of the City Collectorship. We shall see! We shall see!--Adv.

Why take enmities to the grave? Why carry on feuds forever? For eight or ten weeks past I have been engaged in a bitter philosophical, political, sociological, penalogical, pathological, psychological and ethical debate with the unspeakable Democratic Telegram over the right of the Hon. S. S. Field, LL. D., to the ancient style of appellation of Hon.–I taking the affirmative against the Telegram’s hunkerous and immoral negative. In my efforts to convert it I have brought forth a mass of evidence perhaps unmatched in bulk and appositeness in all profane history, and in addition I have made a score of polite and humane concessions, admitting my own unworthiness, confessing to a multitude of crimes, bowing down without question to the dicta of the Telegram’s lawyers, and maintaining throughout an attitude of high dignity, an air of exquisite courtesy and toleration.

And yet--and yet–for all my dignity, for all my courtesy, and for all the power and virulence of my arguments, the Telegram sticks to its guns. In its current issue, as in all issues for two months or more, it continues to maintain, as loudly as ever, that I myself am a paranoiac, an obfuscator, a paralogist, an intellectual schnorrer, and that the Hon. Mr. Field is no Hon. What remains for me to do? I can not convert the Telegram–and my wife and 10 children begin to complain about this digging into my past, this unmerciful discussion of my character. What am I to do?

One course, and one only, alas, alas, remains, and that one I take as in duty bound. That is to say, I end this lamentable war by confessing publicly, standing up in meeting and with my hand on my heart, that the Telegram is and always has been right, and that I am and always have been wrong. And so confessing, I make a full and free apology for my heresies of the past. The Hon. Samuel Summers Field, LL. D., is not today, and never has been, an authentic Hon. His assumption of the title is a gross piece of impertinence. Whatever he himself may say of it, and however his bravos and oilers may rage and roar, he is not and never has been an Hon. His legal title, now, henceforth and forevermore, is plain Sam Field. I have said it. Verbum non amplius addam.

Stannocaput, n, a willing payer of the supermahonic paving tax, a tinhead.

Attorney-General Cosson of Iowa, quoted with approval by Dr. O. Edward Janney:

I maintain that murder and rapine and robbery * * * are * * * inseparable from every segregated vice district of the United States.

Perhaps Dr. Janney will now give us a list of the murders, rapines and robberies committed in Baltimore’s areas of segregation during the last year. I offer him space for a complete roll, and I hereby pledge my word not to curtail it or to question it. Furthermore, I offer to pay $1 into the treasury of the Vice Crusade for every robbery, $5 for every murder and $10 for every rapine.

Far be it from me to cast any doubts upon Dr. Janney’s sincerity. The truth is that I have the utmost faith in it and the utmost respect for the Doctor himself. But My impression here is that he has accepted as an intelligent statement of fact the mere wind-music of a political tenor profundo.

Opportunity now knocks loudly at the door of the Hon. Phillips Lee Goldsborough On the one hand, he may give Maryland a first-rate, or at least a second-rate, Senator in Congress; on the other hand, he may pay a pressing political debt and let Maryland go hang. It will doubtless interest all good citizens to hear that the betting odds in the Eutaw street poker rooms are10 to 1 in favor of the payment of the debt. Bookmakers believe that they are good judges of other things beside horses.

And the more taxes Harry lays on, the more popular he gets. Such is Brains!--Adv.

Last Thursday the Hot Towel suddenly stopped greasing the Customer, and last Saturday the Democratic Telegram printed a hot roast on the Towel. Let the hand play “When Uncle Took His False Nose Off To Sneeze.”

Ungocaput, n, a tallower of a Certain Party, a lardhead.