Baltimore Evening Sun (20 January 1913): 6.

From the first issue of the super-Mahon’s so-called Municipal Journal:

The Journal will open wide the door, so that the world can see the inside operations of the City Hall.

All the super-Mahon needs, to make him perfect, is music by Offenbach.

Dr. O. Edward Janney on the hostility of most men to the proposed woman-hunt:

I have been amazed at * * * their general ignorance of the subject.

Specimen “ignorant” men: Havelock Ellis, Dr. Albert Moll, Mayor Gaynor, Brand Whitlock, Carter H. Harrison, former Justice Eugene E. Grannan, John J. Grgurevich, Captain Logan of the Volunteers of America, Rabbi Charles A. Rubenstein, Director of Public Safety Porter of Philadelphia, the Judges of the Supreme Bench of Baltimore City. Why doesn’t Dr. Janney start a correspondence school for the education of these pathetic ignoramuses? Dr. Donald R. Hooker for the chair of moral surgery! The Rev. Dr. Oliver Huckel for that of psychotherapy and the music of the future! The Hon. Samuel E. Pentz, C. P., for that of evidence and statistics! The Rev. Dr. Kenneth G. Murray for that of pious rabble-rousing!

Astounding doctrine of the estimable Sunpaper:

A newspaper man cannot be too prosperous, because the moment he becomes too prosperous he ceases to be a good reporter. Like that of all artists his best work is done while he is struggling to subsist in a garret. We cannot imagine a sleek Milton, or a sleek Millet. * * *

With the utmost reverence, Pish! There is no more truth in this doctrine than there is in the doctrine that Friday is an unlucky day. Both are accepted almost unanimously and both are 99 per cent. bosh. The fact is, of course, that practically all the greatest artistic prodigies of the world–or, to go further, the greatest intellectual prodigies--have been performed by men in very easy circumstances, and that fully 80 per cent. of them have been performed by men who had no personal acquaintance with poverty whatever.

Go to music, for example. Setting aside Schubert, it is difficult to find a composer of the first rank who ever saw a garret, and even Schubert, after Sonnleithner published his first songs, had an income ample for his needs. His best work was done when he was furthest from care. Old Johann Sebastian Bach, the father of modern music, held one appointment 37 years and was made much of by Frederick the Great. His wife, true enough, died a pauper, but that was after his own death. He himself always had a comfortable home, as comfortable homes went in his day.

Mozart, a celebrity at 15, was constantly besieged by publishers and opera directors, and once refused a salary equivalent today to at least $12,000 a year. If he was occasionally short of money, it was due to his own lack of business sense. Certainly, he never had to “struggle” for a living. Beethoven, the greatest of them all, wrote the immortal Fifth Symphony in comfortable and even luxurious quarters. He was a rich bachelor, and could afford to refuse countless opportunities to make money. Schumann was a university man, and the son of a well-to-do father. Weber’s father was a nobleman. Mendelssohn’s was a millionaire. Wagner wrote “The Ring” in a beautiful villa on the lake of Lucerne. Verdi died worth $800,000. Berlioz lived in honor and comfort all his life. Tschaikovsky received a pension of $2,000 a year from a wealthy admirer. Lizst was enormously wealthy, and sometimes spent $50,000 a year. Chopin was rich and had plenty of rich friends. Meyerbeer was noted for his great business capacity. Gounod, Bizet and Massenet died very well-to-do. Haydn was the friend and daily associate of princes. Handel made $100,000 in London alone as composer and opera director. Brahms left 400,000 marks when he died.

Turn to composers yet living. Richard Strauss has an income of nearly $100,000 a year. Puccini owns two villas in Italy and devotes himself to automobiling. D’Indy is the son of a rich father. Mascagni and Leoncavallo live idly and at ease. Debussy and Reger have lucrative teaching appointments and get big royalties. The Russians are nearly all rich amateurs turned professionals. Elgar,Wolf-Ferrari, D’Albert and Saint-Sæns are men in very easy circumstances. Even Charpentier, the composer of Bohemia, has a good income and has never known want. Not a single first-rate opera or symphony has come out of a garret in our time.

And the thing to be remembered is that few of the great composers were ever in actual want, even in early youth. Many of them were the sons of well-to-do parents: nearly all the rest won valuable scholarships as students and obtained early markets for their wares. When their best work was being done they were not only not “struggling,” but actually living in considerable luxury. Some of them, true enough, were bad business men, and the money that came easily went easily, but it would be difficult to show, I believe, that any one of them ever wrote good music in a garret, with the wolf at his door. Good music, like all other products of the intelligence, is the fruit of ease and not of privation. It is only by a miracle that a man who must “struggle” for his bread ever writes it.

From the supe-Mahon’s salutatory in the first issue of the so-called Municipal Journal:

The Municipal Journal * * * is not intended to * * * criticize or praise.

Characteristic extracts from the same issue:

The magnificent work of City Solicitor Field * * * The Department of Education has had a splendid record [i. e., since Harry canned Van Sickle.] The public should congratulate itself upon the selection of Dr. Nathan R. Gorter as Health Commissioner. The Merchants and Manufacturers’ Association cannot be too highly commended for its enterprise. (!!)

Boil your drinking water! Cover your garbage can! Beware of smallpox in your kitchen! Swat the stray, widowed fly! Break the Blue Laws! Forward the Vice Crusade!

Ten thousand dollars to the angelic Lord’s Day Alliance for one sound argument against the public performance of good music on Sunday.

From the Towel’s eloquent account of the Women’s Civic League’s sewer party:

Many of the women wore handsome costumes of silk and beautiful furs.

An obvious compromise between oilskins on the one hand and ball-gowns and diamond tiaras on the other.