Baltimore Evening Sun (16 January 1913): 6.

The Hon. the super-Mahon joins with gusto in the Hon. Wet Hope Chafin’s powerful denunciation of the Hon. Satan Anderson. Incidentally, it is to be noted that the Hon. Mr. Chafin polled just 474 votes in Baltimore.

Meanwhile, it would be interesting to hear from the Hon. Henry A. McMains, the medical freedomist, upon the subject of vaccination against smallpox. The medical freedomists, in truth, are missing a great opportunity. And so is the learned Maryland Anti-Vivisection Society, that affecting camorra of old maids, male and female. Time was when the society was constantly at the bat, knocking out hot grounders that kept Dr. Welch busy. But of late it has sunk into a state of coma, and only a sharp ear can detect its breathing.

Chief count of the archangelic indictment:

I regard Anderson as a self-seeking scamp.

The cautious Hot Towel changed “scamp” into “individual,” but the Sunpaper printed Harry’s original text. Is scamp, then, a word of slander? I doubt it. The Century Dictionary says that it means (a) a serranoid fish, Trisotrapis falcatus, of a brown color with irregular dark spots, and (b) a fugitive or vagabond, a worthless fellow, a mean villian, a rascal, a rogue. I see no libel in these epithets.

The Hon. Mr. Anderson is obviously as slippery as a fish and he deals constantly in fishy statistics. He is a fugitive from facts. He is a political vagabond, acknowledging allegiance to no great lord. He is worthless in the sense that he is not a producer. He is mean because he makes Harry dance a wild hoochie-coochie, and a villain because he laughs at it. He is a rascal in the sense of belonging to “the commonalty of people, the general mass, the vulgar herd.” He is a rogue in the sense of “a sly, artful fellow,” along with Archbishop Wegg, of Havre de Grace.

Thus it appears that the good Towel was overcautious in deleting “scamp”--beside exposing itself to a crack over the knuckles for its contumacy. Harry does not hire newspapers to edit his copy; he hires them to print it unchanged. And as for the Hon. Mr. Anderson, he is probably wholly unmoved by the accusation. He has been called far worse names. He has himself called a few of considerable virulence and smashing power. He is, indeed, a past master of the art, a virtuoso of epithet, an acknowledged professor. But he will never achieve his masterpiece until he thinks of a satisfactory name for a Sunday-school superintendent who fills the jejune full with virtue on Sunday and the City Hall with ward heelers on Monday.

From the esteemed Starpaper of Kansas City, Mo.:

Amateur is “amature,” not “amatoor” or “amacboor.”

With all due respect, Nonsense! Amateur may be “amaturr” in high school French and “amatoor” in Cockney English, but it is plain “amachoor” in American. Certainly we Americans have got beyond the stage of slavish imitation of the French and English. We are rich enough and tough enough and bold enough to speak our own language in the way that pleases us best. And “amachoor” is obviously in greater accord with the genius of that language than either “amaturr” or “amatoor.”

In the case of other words of heathen origin we have developed our own pronunciations without the slightest hesitancy or sense of shame. For instance, there is “cafe.” Many years ago, when it was new among us, we tried to call it “cah-fay,” but the thing was wormwood to our tonsils, and so we began experimenting with more fluent and luscious forms–“kaffy,” “kaff,” “caw-fee,” “koffy,” etc. Finally we hit upon “kaif,” a simple, grateful and logical form, and the word remains “kaif” among us to this day. There are still snobs, true enough, who attempt the French pronunciation, or the German, or the English, but the great masses of the common people make it “kaif,” and the great masses of the common people, under a free democracy, are the final arbiters of all disputed questions, whether governmental, pathological or orthoepical.

So with such words as “rathskeller,” “menu,” “scherzo,” “petits-pois” and “depot,”" from the outlandish tongues of Germany, France and Italy. We call them “ratskiller,” “mee-noo,” “shirts-oh,” “pettits-poys” and “dee-poh.” And by the same token we turn “hofbræu” into “huffbrow,” “bouillon” into “bullion,” and “faux pas” into “fawks pass.” An American does not speak of M. Fallieres as “M’sieu” Fallieres, but as “Mont-sewer” Fallieres, or, more simply, as “Em” Fallieres. He does not call an andante an “ahn-dahn-te,” with all the a’s broad, but an “andan-ty,” with the first two syllables rhyming with “can” and “fan.” He does not call a piano a “pee-ahn-oh,” but a “pie-an-no,” again with the “an” rhyming with “can”--perhaps a subtle criticism of parlor piano-playing as he knows it.

The tendency of American, in brief, is to get rid of European vowel sounds, and particularly of diphthongs. Our forefathers declared war upon “oi” many years ago, and so the English “roil” became the American “rile.” In the same way “spoil,” “soil” and “boil” became “spile,” “sile” and “bile,” “choice” became “ch’ice” and “hoist” became “hist.” In these later years the identical diphthong has been clawed out of “hofbræu” and a simpler “o” has been inserted in its place. And the slaughter of the broad “a” has converted “sauce” into “sass,” “rathskeller” into “ratskiller” and “palm” into “pa’m” (rhyming with “jam”).

True enough, a contrary tendency has begun to manifest itself. Thus, in New York, it is common to hear the simple “i” sound in such words as “third,” “world” and “journal” converted into “oi,” producing “thoid,” “woild” and “joinal,” and Superintendent Maxwell of the New York public schools has lately cautioned the schoolmarns to combat it. But that error, I suppose, is to be blamed upon the immigrants who crowd Manhattan, and particularly upon the Yiddish-speaking ones. To these strangers “oi” comes so naturally that they use it to excess. But the second generation will undoubtedly abandon it.

The native American’s preference is always for the simple vowels, and he likes them best in their sharpest, least equivocal forms. Thus he discards the veiled “e” in “deaf” and uses an unambiguous “e” instead, making the word “deef.” In “kettle” he substitutes the more incisive “i” sound, making the word “kittle.” His one effort is to give his language a sort of explosive simplicity, to make it, at

[Continued later on.]