Baltimore Evening Sun (19 December 1912): 6.

Say what you will against them Honorary Pallbearers, anyhow they ain’t passing so many resolutions as what they used to.

Inquiry from one subscribing himself the Hon. Charles Henderson:

What is the meaning of swat? I have read frequently your application of this word to flies. Webster’s Dictionary defines it thus: “to sweat.” And under sweat I find: “to cause to emit moisture from the pores of the skin.”

Alas, Webster is an ass. The Century Dictionary does only slightly better. It describes swat as “perhaps a variation of swap” and says it means “to strike, to hit.” Then it puts the word “slang” in parentheses, and passes on to other themes.

The fact is that swat is one of the oldest of the Indo-Germanic roots. In Old Lithuanian it survives as swatgh, to punch, to biff, and in Persian as al-swaht, a place for slaughtering cattle. Its relation to the familiar Sanskrit word swastika, a lucky charm, has been pointed out by Sayce, Himmelheber, Snodgrass, Bierfisch and other eminent philologists. When the primeval Aryan went swatting he took his swastika with him. More modern descendants of the ancient word are to be found in the Icelandic swatz, to wallop, to pummel; in the OFries. schwart, to crush with a log of wood, and in the MHG. schwanken, to shake up, to agitate, to squeeze. In the German of today, to make an end, there is schwappen, to puncture, to squash, to burst.

Such is the ancestry of swat, one of the most ancient and beautiful of words. I wish I could go into the matter exhaustively, giving quotations from the archaic sagas and palimpsests, but that would take a lot of space, and various sociological problems press for discussion. Suffice it to say that swat is almost as old a word as man and that for 5,000 years it has meant to mash, to squash, to flatten out.

From the annual report of the Hon. Samuel E. Pentz, chief of scouts of the Society for the Alleged Suppression of Vice:

Rogers avenue has * * * been cleaned out entirely, closing about 50 houses, and we have attempted to follow the mistresses of the houses * * * and have been successful is causing some of them to be constantly on the move.

The Vice Crusaders’ ideal--to maintain a hot and exciting pursuit, to keep the quarry on the run, to carry the chase through as many neighborhoods as possible. Is this really an intelligible reform, or merely a pious form of sport? I leave the answer to the Police board, the grand jury and the judges of the Supreme Bench.

New Year’s greetings to a Baltimorean:

May you live until the former sheriffs cough up!

Prices current at the Johns Hopkins Medical School, as supplied by the Maryland Antivivisection Society:

Guinea pigs 30 @ 40 Dachshunds $1.10 @ l.12 Rabbits 38 @ 40 Newfoundlands $2.20 @ 2.25 Tomcats 15 @ 17 Rats (with plague) 65 @ 70 Do. (without) 05 @ 06 Jaguars $3.15 @ $3.20 Hippopotamuses $6.25 @ $6.30 Christian Scientists $12 @ @12.30

Jocose specifications issued by the Hon. Robert J. McCuen, the eminent bachelor:

She must be domestically inclined, and able to sing.

If you don’t see the joke, just try to find a girl who is both domestically inclined and able to sing.

Some anonymous suffragette sends me a copy of a moral pamphlet alleged to be by Dr. William Henry Howell, professor of physiology at the Johns Hopkins. A diligent study of the University Register [New Series, 1912, No. 5] fails to show any professor of logic in the university.

The more the time passes, the more it seems like a body won’t never hear nothing no more about no more of them stuffers no more.

Muckocaput, n, one who believes that every human act must be either right or wrong and that 99.999999999999999999999999999999999 + per cent. of them are wrong, a militant moralist, a smuthound.

The soft, mournful crooning of the platitudinartans:

Faint heart ne’er won fair lady.–The Hon. Robert J. McCuen.

From a letter addressed to The Evening Sun on December 11 by one calling himself George Warren, and giving 227 North Carrollton avenue as his address:

“Fanny’s First Play,” Shaw’s latest, is a revel of rot and rudeness, the disgraceful attempt of a degenerate to reform a degenerated audience by slapping slime to their faces.

On December 13 I called attention to the indegent untruthfulness of this charge, and showed that “Fanny’s First Play,” far from being “a revel of rot and rudeness,” is, in fact, a wholly harmless comedy, whatever may be the heresiess in Shaw’s other dramas. But did this inspire the Hon. Mr. Warren to withdraw his remarks of December 11, and apologize for the gratuitous and intolerable libel in them? Not at all. The sole inspiration he got out of the incident was an inspiration to giggle. That is to say, he sent another letter to The Evening Sun, and in it he sought to evade the direct issue by changing the terms of his allegation and making a feeble effort to be funny.

I do not know this so-called Mr. Warren, and, so far as I can find out, he is a wholly unimportant person. But he represents very accurately a certain phase of the moral mind--the phase, to wit, of reckless and shameless mendacity, of total inability to distinguish between a thing that is merely virtuous and agreeable and a thing that is true. In the present case, no appreciable damage is done, for every civilized human being knows that Shaw is never guilty of the vile hoggishness alleged. But in many another case it is impossible for the man or men accused to make a defense--and to such cases the unconscionable moralist draws his blood and gets his joy.

In particular, this is true of those sanctimonious clowns who devote themselves to denouncing the stage. On the one hand, they allege that all stage plays, without exception, are indecent and corrupting, and on the other hand, they commonly allege, or at least broadly insinusite, that all stage women are prostitutes. They never go to the theatre; they know nothing whatever about actresses; both of their charges are inexcusable and abominable slanders. And yet they keep up their dirty gabbling day in and day out, and thousands of numbskulls look up to them as founts of piety and respect them as honest men.