Baltimore Evening Sun (18 February 1913): 6.

Hooker vs. O’Dunne: moralist eat moralist!

The master banalities of Baltimore architecture: the Enoch Pratt Central Library, the Key monument, the Katzenjammer Tower.

The good old Sunpaper, which formerly printed a portrait of the Hon. Boomer Dickey at least once a week, has lately turned a cold shoulder upon that great savior of the masses. I suspect a sinister motive–some low intrigue against the man’s political aspirations. Whatever the cause, he is not getting the worth of his money, and so I hasten to make amends, to wit:

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Let the boomers take heart. Space in this place, at The Evening Sun’s customary rate, brings 25 cents a line. Any boomer may have $5 worth of it whenever the yearning seizes him, and by the simple process of sending his card to my isecretary. Common livewires at half rates. No worthy applicant turned away.

It is certainly to be hoped that the suffragette hikers, after their harrowing experience with swinish mobs at Princeton and Philadelphia, will meet with the utmost politeness in Baltimore. This town has its faults, but churlishness is not one of them. It is our immemorial tradition that the stranger will be received with courtesy, just as it is our tradition that women shall be accorded a chivalrous deference. To that extent we are old-fashioned—and proud of it. We do not regard the baiting of strangers, and particularly of women strangers, as a sport fit for civilized white men.

Therefore, let us give the fair hikers protection against any Philadelphians or other barbarians who may follow them to our gates, and let us make ready, on our own part, to show them some agreeable attention. The appointment of a committee to meet them and kiss their hands suggests itself. That Old World courtesy is going out of fashion, even in Baltimore, but it deserves to be revived and put on its legs again. Why not seize the present opportunity to demonstrate its charm? Why not appoint a committee of indubitable Baltimore gentlemen to make amends for the insults of the Princeton ruffians and the Philadelphia canaille? Let me suggest the following as a nucleus:

Sir Walter De Curson Poultney, Bart. (chairman). The Hon. Robert J. McCuen. The Hon. William Shepard Bryan, Jr., LL. B. The Hon. Henry Edward Warner. The Hon. Isaac Lobe Straus, LL. B. The Rev John Roach Straton, D. D. Col. Jerome H. Joyce. The Hon. S. S. Field, Dr. Jur. Et Phil. Tunis F. Dean, Esq.

I do no more than suggest. these names: their bearers are representative and courtly men, well schooled in the Baltimore tradition. Let such a committee be appointed to meet the hikers a few miles out the Philadelphia road, to kiss their hands in the first place and to offer them protection in the second place. The ceremony might be made a very pretty one. The boomers could do worse than call rehearsals at once.

Learned note in the usually veracious Sunpaper:

Dr. Osler * * * was knighted by King Edward for his work for the relief of suffering humanity.

News to Dr. Osler, and to the shade of King Edward no less. The truth is that Dr. Osler has never been knighted, either by King Edward or by King George V. He was made a baronet at the coronation of King George—but a baronet is not a knight, and King George is not his own father.

Knighthood is a merely personal honor and it dies with the holder, but a baronetcy is just as much inheritable as a barony. There are baronets in England, whose titles go back to the early part of the seventeenth century, when King James I instituted the honor—and sold it to all comers at $5,000 a head. If Dr. Osler had a son, that son would become a baronet at his death. And if he had a daughter, the title might be transferred to that daughter’s husband by royal writ. As it is, it will go to his surviving brother—if he has one—or to his oldest nephew.

A baronet, of course, is not a peer. He has no seat in the House of Lords. He seldom plays golf with the King. In law he remains a commoner. But when there is a turnout of the volunteer firemen in London he is entitled to march ahead of all mere knights—even ahead of Knights Grand Cross of the Bath. If a knight sneaks ahead of him, he can have the fellow dragged to the calaboose.

Jusocaput, n, a subscriber to the Municipal Journal; a souphead.

The Latin word jus, by the way, means both “soup” and “court of justice”—thus showing the ready wit of the men of them times.

Also, by the way, I hear that wiskinskis are going among the street-cleaners collecting 50 cents a head for subscriptions to the Municipal Journal. The Journal devotes a good deal of space to topics of interest to street-cleaners. For example, it prints a lot of stuff about the doings and opinions of City Councilmen. Every street-cleaner carries a City Councilman’s baton in his helmet. No other class of men, saving only lamp-lighters, bartenders and cart-drivers, has been so well represented in the Council during.tbe last half century.

Let me direct the attention of all moralists to the play of “Kismet,” now on view at one of our local palaces of sin. All the ladies and gentlemen of the cast appear with bare ankles, and at one place in the third act a young woman trips upon the stage in a raincoat, boldly throws it off—and plunges into a swimming pool! Oh, horrors! Oh, woe! And next door Mrs. Leslie Carter is playing “Camille!” Oh, immorality! Oh, lamentation! Oh, bosh!

Ten thousand dollars for any evidence, not palpably satirical, that women would do worse with the suffrage than men have done.

The Hon. Edward Hirsch is going to the Concord Club bal masque as the Hon. Satan Anderson. The Hon. Mr. Anderson will appear as the Hon. Mr. Hirsch.—Adv.