Baltimore Evening Sun (14 December 1912): 6.

Still, it is difficult to say what the Gas Company has gained by awarding that contract to the Timanus firm. The Hon. Mr. Timanus, unless I am a maniacal psychologist, will now have to lean very far back to prove his judicial fairness–and that leaning back may cost the company almost as much as Sol’s use of the hose.

The Hon. William H. Anderson in yesterday’s Evening Sunpaper:

An individual who commits an offense carrying with it more than one year’s imprisonment is very likely to lie about what got him into it.

Of course he is--and his lie usually takes the form of blaming it upon Rum, that universal goat of the moralists. The aim of the criminal is to gain the sympathy and good will of moralists, whether on the bench, in the jury box or elsewhere, and so he ladles out the sort of bosh that they like. As a mere law-breaker he arouses their virtuous passions, and they are all for clubbing him, mutilating him and burning him at the stake. But as a victim to Rum, that curse, that viper, he reduces them to tears, and out of their tears come agreeable balms and usufructs.

But not many policemen, I believe, are ever fooled by that benign faking. Policemen are unsentimental and unbelieving fellows. They know very well that most crooks, far from being slaves of Rum, are really teetotalers. They know that such a thing as a drunken burglar or pickpocket or sneak thief or shoplifter is almost as rare as a moralist who habitually tells the truth.

After all, we could do worse than send Harry to the United States Senate. He has his faults, true enough, and it is an agreeable pastime to call attention to them, but taking him as he stands he is easily the best man among the avowed candidates. Compare him, for example, to the estimable John Walter, a perfect pattern of the useless and unimaginative Senator. John Walter does not represent the people of Maryland in the Senate: he merely represents himself. And he himself seems scarcely big enough to be represented. A truly great man, I am convinced, fully deserves that privilege and honor. His opinions and desires are more respectable than the opinions and desires of millions of common men taken together. But if you are ever tempted to believe that John Walter is such a man, just recall the fact that the melodramatic clowning of the Hon. Mr. Lorimer made him weep--not once, but twice. No doubt the play of “La Dame aux Camelias” would dissolve him entirely.

As for the fear that a fourth-rate politician of the Harry type would do discredit to Maryland and digrace to the Senate, kindly forget it. Maryland has been electing such fellows to high office for years, and the Senate is fast getting used to them. In the old days the Senate was a resort for truly dignified and sagacious men. Some of them were honestly elected by admiring Legislatures, and others bought their way In, but however they arrived. they undoubtedly brought brains with them. Of that distinguished company were Sumner, Randolph, Benton, Calhoun, Clay, Douglas and Evarts, and in later years, Hoar, Allison, Aldrich and Morgan.

But no more. The Senate now falls into the hands of the Goths and Huns. The direct primary scheme, by putting the election of Senators into the hands of the common people, has enabled them to elect the sort of men they most admire--that is to say, the men who excel at wind music, the merchants of balderdash, the fakes and demagogues. Where once the lordly Webster spoke and Roscoe Conkling beetled his Jovian brow, the boy orator now rages and roars and the quack performs his cacophonous quacking. In brief, the Senate has degenerated to the level of a State Legislature, and is going full tilt toward the level of a ward club. Senator Rayner was one of the last of the old-time orators, and one of the last of the old-time educated men. Lodge stands upon a burning deck. The typical Senator of tomorrow will be a fellow who began as driver of an ash cart and worked life way up through the slowly rising posts of precinct, wiskinski, elevator man, health warden, City Councilman, ward executive and district boss. By 1925 a Senator who can speak correct English and has ever read a history of the United States will seem an offensive invader, a tedious intellectual fop.

No; don’t fear that the super-Mahon will not measure up to the average of the Senate. On the contrary, he will stand well above that average. Say what you will against him, he is no vapid chaser of fake panaceas. He is not converted daily to some new madness. The horrendous political Perunas that come out of the West have left him unpoisoned. As politicians go, he is a well-educated and civilized man. He has studied resolutely, if the Towel is to be believed, the works of Andrew Jackson and Thomas Jefferson, Charles Dickens and Hannah More. He makes an acceptable speech, though its matter may be bile. He has the gift of a sonorous and voluptuous English style. He plays acceptably upon the violin. He knows at least one foreign language and has been abroad. He dresses and conducts himself in company as an American gentleman and is free of the grosser vices.

Let us send him to the Senate, by all means. He will represent very accurately the public opinion of this state, and even if he doesn’t reach the pinnacles of leadership, he will at least give us a good show.

A wild cocoa-butter bomb, discharged from the Towel’s battlements, burst over the Monument Square yesterday and so greased the wood-block paving that 17 horses, 9 mules and an osseocaput came down upon their knuckles.

Read the Maryland Suffrage News and lose your enthusiasm for the suffrage.--Adv.

The Hon. the super-Mahon to the ladies of the Women’s Civic League:

I * * * determined that no public servant should be discharged because another wanted his place.

Say what you will against the hon. gent., his comedy is always clean.

Virtuous remark of the learned Wegg of Havre de Grace, chorepiscopus, etc., in defense of his defense of the Havre de Grace deacons:

I am in favor of having public evils adjudicated by the proper authorities.

So am I. That is why I favor the Police Board and the Supreme Bench against the fevered huntsmen of the Vice Crusade, and the Baltimore County Commissioners against the snoopers and tear-squeezers of the Lord’s Day Alliance. But isn’t it a fact that Wegg has hitherto made impassioned argument for Crusade and Alliance?