Baltimore Evening Sun (17 January 1913): 6.

My spies bring me news that the Hon. the super-Mahon has appointed a court-martial to try the estimable Hot Towel for changing the word “scamp,” in his counterblast to the Hon. Satan Anderson, into “individual,” a flaccid and preposterous term. The Hon. Samuel Summers Field, LL. D., will be judge-advocate, and the other members will be the Hon. Aristides Sophocles Goldsborough. LL. B.; the Hon. Bob Lee, LL. B.; the Hon. Jacobus Hook, K. T., and the Hon. McCay McCoy, C. E. The chief attorney for the defense will be the Hon. Witch Hazel Altfeld, LL. B. The devil’s advocate will be the Hon. Max Ways.

AN EXPERT’S VIEW.

If women could vote, it wouldn’t be so often necessary to murder them.—The late Dr. H. Harvey Crippen.

The Hon. Satan Anderson is sending out secret word to his bravos that the local option bill will go into effect July 1, 1914, and that he will hang the first kaif-keeper on July 4. Let us all hope that he will pick out a seller of fake Pilsener.—Adv.

Those bravos who have lately hacked Dr. Howard A. Kelly to death in the Letter Column forget one indubitable service that be has rendered to Baltimore, whatever the evil in his moral panaceas, and that is the service of breaking down the old prudery of this town. Time was when it was wholly impossible to discuss the social evil in public, and least of all in a newspaper. Such things were approached only by indirection and dirty innuendo. Any public use of such words as “prostitute” and “prostitution” was frowned upon, and the nearest an editorial writer could come to “brothel” was “house of queestionable repute”–a tartuffian piece of verbal garbage. In brief, there was a pious conspiracy, by old maids of both sexes, against the open and reasonable discussion of one of the most important problems of civilization.

But that time is no more. Without any loss of essential decency the capital question of social vice is now openly debated in Baltimore, and there is a free interchange of testimony and opinion, and old delusions are brushed away. For all this Dr. Kelly deserves thanks. Moralists before him had tackled the problem, but they had tackled it clad in white robes and wearing lavender gloves. Dr. Kelly tackled it in his shirt-sleeves and with his bare hands. I haven’t the slightest belief in the remedies he proposes, but I have the utmost respect for his courage. That courage, discounting it all you please, has been of genuine service to the community.

What the net result of the present crusade will be remains to be seen. At the moment, the crusaders seem to be halted, and the probabilities are that they will get no further with their nonsense. But even if they prevail, the fundamental problem of prostitution will remain. What is to be done about it? Here is food for thoughtful and public-spirited men—and particularly for men who can think logically and coolly, and not merely morally. The public tires of hearing what ought to be done: what it wants to know is what can be done.

Say what you will against the Right Hon. the super-Mahon, anyhow you can’t accuse him of fleeing the Andersonian spear. The Hon. Isaac Lobe Straus came into camp with his hands up, and the Hon. Messrs. John Walter Smith, Blair Lee and Joshua Frederick Cockey Talbott dropped and blazed dead, but the super-Mahon stood his ground like a man and took the spear bravely. I do not say that he didn’t flinch—as a matter of fact, he loosed a yell that was heard 400 miles–but at all events he didn’t dodge. And when he had recovered his poise and his breath, he let fly at the Hon. Mr. Anderson with a band-picked cobblestone.

Thus great statesmen come to the grapple and the vulgar get the bloody sport they crave. Of all the gladiators now performing before the mob, I presume to give the point to the Hon. the super-Mahon. He is a first-rate union slugger, making up in pertinacity and endurance what he lacks in science. And when he takes on the Hon. Mr. Anderson he taken on a performer fully worthy of his utmost talents. Every connoisseur, indeed, must hope for an early return engagement.

The seven days’ reprieve of that suffragette who lately sent me a scurrilous letter expires at midnight tonight, but I have decided to extend it for thirty days. Such is gemuethlichkeit among sinners! But I make the extension only upon the condition that the Maryland Suffrage News refrain from calling me names in its issue of tomorrow. Personally, I have no objection to a reasonable use of invective, but I have eight children to think of and one of my uncles is a clergyman. To these innocents the constant allegation that I am a friend to vice gives pain, and so I try to arrange a truce. If the Suffrage News will say something positively complimentary, I shall let the lady felon off altogether. I do not ask it to withdraw its past charges, nor even to admit categorically that I am a friend to virtue. All I ask is that it say something vaguely complimentary—for instance, that I am a passable union pianist, or that I have never committed arson. If it fails to do so–well, if it fails there will be suffrage meetings in the Federal Calaboose at Atlanta. Verbum sap.

Affecting poem in the Hon. Satan Anderson’s weekly paper:

The Whiskey Trust has got to go,
It never was a blessing;
The boys and girls, they all say so,
Good common sense confessing.

A subtle ratification of Pilsener, that great boon to man. It costs less and it goes further.

Corpses in the boneyard of moral endeavor:

The Moral Education Drama Association. The Harry monument committee.

From the Hon. Satan Anderson’s excoriation of the Hon. James Harry Preston, that chronic victim of scoundrels:

Hons. Isaac Lobe Straus, John Walter Smith, J. Fred C. Talbott and Blair Lee.

Observe the “Hons.” Apparently a new dialetic form of American—the first appearance of the inflected adjective. But does the Hon. Mr. Anderson, in exhorting his clerical janissaries, address them as “Revs.”?

Next the message to the Job Hounds, with its bilious accusations of unearthly deviltry and its shrill caterwauling of self-praise!—Adv.

Col. Jacobus Hook has presented 100,000 copies of the Old Town Bank’s pretty little memorandum book to the Concord Club. The members have divided them into piles of 560 each, and use them for chairs.—Adv.