Baltimore Evening Sun (16 December 1912): 6.

Local option is the doctrine that it is better to die of jimjams than to tell the truth.

Let every good citizen give thanks on his knees for the failure of the Hon. Augustus Cæsar Binswanger, M. C., to reduce the pickings of the Hon. Jacobus Hook, K. T. According to Gus, Jake is now getting $7,000 a year for shaking us down, which is $1,000 more than Harry Himself gets for superintending the shaking. But this is only half of the truth, and Gus knows it in his heart. When Jake has squeezed the taxpayers he has barely commenced his day’s work. The harder and more useful part still lies before him: he must devote all that remains of the day and four-fifths of the ensuing night to the defense and greasing of his Exalted Friend and Patron.

Don’t think, dear Gus, that this is easy toil. Far from it, indeed. How would you like to do it? How would you like to stand up before some new lodge or club or improvement association every night—sometimes three or four a night!—and intone with a straight face all that old balderdash about Ability, Energy and Brains? How would you like to swallow from 7 to 25 bad banquets a week, and listen solemnly and eternally to such noisy orators as Dan Loden, Aristides Sophocles Goldsborough, Bob Lee, Sam Field and Ed Quarles? Believe me, it is no child’s play. And yet good Jake performs it with diligence and passion, even when scoffers snicker and black-hearted scoundrels cry for a rope. And what is more, he is willing to keep on doing it so long as he gets his paltry $7,000 a year.

As for the Hon. Mr. Binswanger’s constitutional objection, it serves only to reveal his ignorance of jurisprudence. It is true enough, as he says, that Jake draws $5,000 for collecting the State taxes, whereas the State Constitution forbids any jobholder to draw more than $3,000, but certainly this is no argument to lay before a self-respecting Maryland court. Our jurisprudence has long since transcended the crude letter of the statutes and Constitution. Fertilized by the ingenuity of our barristers and watered by the learning of our judges, it is now a far richer and more gorgeous begonia. Under its broad fronds there is shelter for a hundred diverse forms of law-breaking, and some of them are so complex and so beautiful that the truly legal mind must stand benumbed and flabbergasted before them. Let Gus forget the laws and study law. Is it possible that he has never heard of the former sheriffs’ case?

No; he will not floor Jake. The City Council may be a sanhedrin of mush-heads, but their skulls are not soft enough to let any such rascality go through. They know that Jake deserves good pay for his greasing, and they know that all such bills should be sent to the taxpayers. It is the taxpayers who pay the Towel for its noble performances of the Vaseline Concerto in E flat. It is the taxpayers who reimburse city contractors and depositories who so cheerfully cash the “letter of introduction” of the Democratic Telegram. It is the taxpayers who provide victuals and winter underwear for all the greasing genii that Harry has gathered about him, and for the ward heelers who gang upon his wisdom, and for the contractors who love him for the enemies that he has made. This is the supreme function of the taxpayers: they are patrons of. Virtue, spoon-feeders of Brains. No wonder they pay their taxes and super-taxes with glad cries, and are only sorry that Harry’s oilers do not ask for more!

Extract from Chapter XLVII of “Following the Equator” (pages 438-39), by the late Dr. S. L. Clemens (Mark Twain):

When the lust in the hunter’s heart is for the noblest of all quarries, man * * * how watery and poor is the zeal and how childish the endurance of * * * other hunters by comparison! Then neither hunger, nor thirst, nor fatigue, nor deferred hope, nor monotonous disappointment, nor leaden-footed lapse of time can conquer the hunter’s patience or weaken the joy of his quest or cool the splendid rage of his desire. Of all the hunting passions that burn in the breast of man, there is none that can lift him superior to discouragements like these but the one—the royal sport, the supreme sport, whose quarry is his brother. By comparison, tiger hunting is a colorless poor thing, for all it has been so bragged about.

Respectfully referred to the militant moralists who now go raging and roaring through this town, alert for victims, eager to strike. On page 446 of the same book, by the way, there is what seems to be an eloquent defense of them. But it is only fair to warn them that this apparent defense is full of dynamite.

From the estimable Cumberland Press of a late date:

The work of the Greater Baltimore Committee is wonderful in its simplicity and marvelous in its scientific ingenuity. Latest of its perpetrations is a pithy announcement, bound to bring fame to the Monumental City and in attract manufacturers to its gates. It reads thusly:

Hon. J Barry Mahool, former Mayor of Baltimore and widely known in the State, has been elected president of the Associated Boards of Trade of Maryland. Mr. Norman Parrot, Secretary of the Greater Baltimore Committee, was elected director, vice Mr. G. A. Waterman, resigned.

Now let Cleveland take a back seat and Philadelphia go into bankruptcy. Detroit will be bereft of the automobile industry, and the alarm clocks of Waterbury, Conn., will be stilled. Sh! Don’t cheer, boys; other cities are dying! That stir on the thoroughfares today was a procession of Cumberland industries rushing to the railroads to entrain for Baltimore. How could they resist this great argument of the Greater Baltimore Committee in favor of migration to that city?

At a special meeting of the Concord Club, holden last night, it was decided to listen to Col. Jacobus Hook two minutes for every chair he buys for the new meeting room. A resolution making it three minutes was defeated viva voce.

Editor Aristides, of the Weekly Harry, has ordered a sextuple goose-grease machine from R. Hoe & Co., but the betting is 4 to 1 that he doesn’t do better color work than the Towel.

Sagacious remark of the Hon. William H. Anderson, that confessedly ignorant foe of alcohol:

I decline to accept any statistics without knowing their pedigree.

Agreed. And in the case of local option statistics I still decline after knowing their pedigree.

Amusing books of the moment, suitable for Christmas gifts to civilized friends:

“Zuleika Dobson,” by Max Beerbohm. (Lane.) “The Perfect Gentleman,” by Harry Graham. (Duffield.) “The Excuse Book,” anonymous. (Luce.)

The boomers! The boomers! They’re on the job again. And proving that the canvasback is mightier than the pen!

Boil your drinking water! Cover your garbage can! Respect and revere the super-Mahon!