Baltimore Evening Sun (25 December 1912): 4.
Who could cherish enmities on Christmas Day? Not I! I sit here in the gloomy Sun office, chasing the blatta orientalis all day long and learning how to love. Refreshments are forbidden in the building, but the Bentztown Bard has brought up a carboy of cider from Benztown-am-Magothy--and what are rules on Christmas Day? So I turn with a glad heart to the Maryland Suffrage News and forgive Dr. Donald R . Hooker, C. P., for this:
his debauched, depraved column.
Thus Dr. Hooker wrote of my labors no longer ago than last Saturday, but already I pardon him and wish him well. Now and then he gets het up by the fevers of controversy, and then he carries on like the fore man of a posse of lynchers, but in general he is an amiable fellow, soft-spoken and long-suffering. May 1913 be kind to him!
And the scoundrelly Democratic Telegram--I forgive it freely for all its slanders. On November 16 it called me a paranoic and on November 30 it said that I was “not an ordinary, everyday liar,” but something finer and worse. But I hold no rage against the Telegram for these yieldings to political fervor. The Hon. George A. Frick, its estimable editor, will never starve to death so long as I have 10 cents. And he will never thirst so long as I have an ignoble nickel.
Again, there is the unspeakable Mr. Wegg, chorepiscopus of Havre de Grace in partibus infidelium. Whenever I have had occasion, during this year 1912, to take Wegg to task for his sophistical condonations of diaconal chicanery he has replied with waspish and insulting words. On December 5, for example, he deuounced me as a low, coarse fellow and tried to prove, against all the facts, that I had called the vice crusaders whited sepulchres. I replied to him in parliamentary terms, on the same day, calling him a deliberate falsifier, a scandal-monger, a receiver of stolen sweets and a fugitive from the lex non scripta. I now withdraw that reply and grant Wegg a full pardon, with restoration of his civil rights. Aside from the fact that he is a moralist, I hear only good of him. He plays a shrewd game of checkers, he is a passable performer upon the graphophone and he is beloved by domestic animals. It is a pleasure to praise so worthy a character.
But if my praise of Dr. Wegg may seem to deny the superb virtue of other moralists, I apologize with tears in my eyes. So far as I can make out, they are all full of merit. For instance, my good friend Dr. W. W. Davis, chief of scouts of the Lord’s Day Alliance. Dr. Davis subscribes to a theory of conduct which appears to me as almost worse than cannibalism, but I revere the man for his pertinacity and his courage. The more the hell-hounds of Back Riber bark and bite at him, the more doggedly he hangs to their trail. Soon or late he will win. Personally I hope that it will not be soon, but meanwhile I offer him the compliments of the day.
Hon. Satan Anderson I need not forgive at this mushy season, for I have already applied the goose grease to him with almost towelian ardor, and accounts between us are squared. But I heap coals of fire upon the Hon. James Harry Preston, who lately denounced The Evening Sun as “scurrillous,” by handing him a vaseline Roland for his aqua fortis Oliver. That is to say, I make the categorical admission, in the name of the whole staff, that he is an energetic, intelligent, resourceful, courageous and excellent Mayor. And to still the snickers of those vermin who may mistake this for a cheap effort to win his smiles, I hasten to add the corollary that he would be even better if he were not so overchested.
Which brings me, by an easy process, to the Hon. W. C. Williams, advertising agent of the local Christian Science healers. On more than one occasion, during this last year, the Hon. Mr. Williams has sought to write me down an ass in The Evening Sun Letter Column, and in the month of September, unless I do him injustice, he attacked me with malicious animal magnetism. At all events, I had lumbago, and swore like an archdeacon. But I forgive him freely, whether he is guilty or not, and wish him a prosperous trade in 1913. Christian Science makes up in virtue all it lacks in sense, and Mr. Williams is one of its most earnest, diligent and respectable advocates. May he escape the shochets of allopathy forewer!
To all misceneous critics and sneerers, the same blessed fate! For example, to the Rev. Dr. Edward Niles, who denounced me, on November 27, as “knight errant to the ancient hag of Vested Wrong”--a nice thing to say about a man with eight children growing up and a mother-in-law already suspicious enough! For example, to “Veritas” and “East Baltimore,” who lately called me, from behind the bastions of anonymity, such names as nightmares are made on. For example, to that fair lady who bawled me out as “inhuman” and “a Teuton”--harsh charges, but now forgiven. For example, to Dr. O. Edward Janney, who took me in the rear with a cobblestone after I had been at pains to treat him politely. I absolve the doctor and give three cheers for him. In the heat of combat even the best man sometimes forgets the punctillio.
Then there are my tender friends the anti-vivisectionists. If I have ever said anything, for a year past, that has offended them, I hereby offer my humble apologies. May 1913 give them their heart’s desire! May they nab the unspeakable Dr. Welsh on some dark night and tie him to a telegraph pole and there vivisect him with dull and rusty saws! May they rush the Johns Hopkins Medical School with loud, glad yelps and put Dr. Arabella Kenealy in the chair of pathology and old Doc Buck, the mystic Mason, in that of laparotomy! I drink a seidel of the Bard’s cider to these excellent ladies and kiss their hands.
And the boomers--may they gather in eternally what the Afro-American pastors call “a good plate”! And the Honorary Pallbearers--may they wear their black gloves from January 1 to January 1, proceeding ceaselessly and delightfully from one obsequy to another! And the single taxers, Socialists, spiritualists and suffragettes--may they eat, drink and be marry! And finally, my distingulshed friend the Hon. Samuel E. Pentz--may be be supplied with endless bales of bogus statistics, and convert millions of mythical frail ladies. and wring the tears of billions of sinners with his tales of moral derring-do! Today is Christmas and I am in a hurry to escape. I forgive everybody all over again, starting with _____________________________________!