Baltimore Evening Sun (26 February 1913): 6.

THE FREE LANCE

The Hon. the super-Mahon to an awed young reporter of the Hot Springs Daily News:

I was a Clark man * * * Had he been nominated, it is likely I would have been his running mate.

But of all the sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: They canned me then.

The Hon. R. L. French, in yesterday’s Letter Column, entered upon an ingenious defense of his recent allegation that those chiefs of police who argue against the dispersion of the social evil are “receivers of benefits”—i. e., that they share in the profits of prostitutes. Here are his facts:

  1. “The evidence brought out in the Rosenthal murder case and that collected since by Whitman show that the police of New York grafted off the houses of prostitution.”
  2. “If my memory serves, a similar condition was found in Albany a couple of years ago.”

  3. “A Mayor of a Western city (Seattle, was it not?) was recalled, largely for putting and keeping in office a chief of police who tolerated a wide-open town.”

Impressive evidence, despite its discreet ifs and buts. But when I brought chiefs of police into court, I brought chiefs of police of specific cities—to wit, New Orleans, Richmond, Detroit, St. Louis, New Haven, Denver, Cleveland and Birmingham, Ala. I mentioned these men by name. I mentioned no other chiefs of police. Does the Hon. Mr. French now maintain that the men I mentioned are “receivers of benefits,” that they take graft from prostitutes? That was his exact accusation against my police witnesses—and these were my witnesses. Is he now willing to repeat his accusation in direct and unequivocal form? Is he willing to accuse the following men by name:

James W. Reynolds, Chief of Police of New Orleans. Louis Werner, Chief of Police of Richmond. John J. Downey, Chief of Police of Detroit. William Young, Chief of Police of St. Louis. Henry D. Cowles, Chief of Police of New Haven. Felix O’Neill, Chief of Police of Denver. Frederick Kohler, Chief of Police of Cleveland. George K. Bodeker, Chief of Police of Birmingham.

My opinion is that the Hon. Mr. French will not accuse these men by name—that even if his legal adviser does not call his attention to the perils of libel, his own calm reflection and common fairness will save him from any such unwarranted slander of men he does not know. Let us blame his tall talk of a week ago upon the natural heat of a moralist–and cross-examine him no further. But let us not forget that moralists, when they thus glow and give out sparks, are not to be taken seriously, that their testimony is extravagant and unreliable, that it is not well to pay too much heed to their gross and indecent attacks upon honest men.

The boomers! The boomers! Again they bay the moon! And wring divine candanzas from the saccharine bassoon!

The estimable Democratic Telegram, in its current issue, praises the Hon. Isaac Lyttleton Newman and the late Ge. George Washington, defends Advocate O’Dunne against the moral bile of Dr. Donald R. Hooker, denounces the Evening News for reviling the niggero in Mexico and cultivating him in Maryland, grooms the Hon. Jim Trippe for a judgeship, warns the Hon. Woodrow Wilson against interfering in these parts, reads a lecture to the suffragettes, and accuses me of being a secret ally of Dr. O. Edward Janney. A brisk, bracing issue of a versatile and ingentous gazette.

Of the 756 millionaires convicted of violating the Sherman Anti-Trust act during the past six months, 748 confessed on the stand that they smoked cigarettes. More than 600 were also wine-bibbers, and 82 used coke.—Adv.

A member of the Maryland Historical Society calls my attention to the fact that March 25 will be the sixtieth anniversary of the bathtub in Baltimore. On that day, in the year 1853, the first bathtub ever seen in these parts–a huge affair of mahogany and zinc—was set up in a private house on St. Paul street near Saratoga. Naturally enough, it met with ridicule at the start, and most of the older physicians of the day held that it was dangerous to life and limb, but in the long run it conquered. By the time the Civil War opened, according to the Sunpaper of August 22, 1861, there were already nearly 150 bathtubs in the city, and during the eighties they began to grow common.

Why not celebrate the anniversary in some appropriate manner? For example, why not a general agreement, by the whole population of Baltimore, to take a bath on March 25, despite the fact that it falls an a Tuesday? Let custom and prejudice yield for once, at least, to patriotism and the historical sense. The boomers could get thousands of columns about the celebration into the newspapers of the United States. It would be the first time in history that the whole population of any city in Christendom had bathed on the same day.

New and stimulating slanders of Hon. Satan Anderson, the growlericide:

In the year 1891, at Oscaloosa, Ala., he was hanged for piracy. On August 31, 1894, at Peoris, Ill., he saved himself from a raid on a Sunday checkers game by jumping out of a sixth-story window.

Ten thousand dollars reward to the Hon. Satan Anderson for any evidence, not palpably manufactured, that rum causes more forgeries and kidnapping than cigarettes.

The woman who smokes cigarettes today will be hitting the pipe tomorrow. The woman who hits the pipe tomorrow will be clubbing her husband the day after.

New novels that rise above the common level of dull bosh:

Thrillers that will keep you awake, even on Sunday:

    “The Dragoman,” by George K. Stiles. (Harper.)
  1. “The Little Sister,” by Elizabeth Robins. (Dodd-Mead.)

New serious books that are worth a glance or two:

A new book of first-rate poetry, by an American:

“The Stranger at the Gate,” by John G. Neihardt. (Kennerley.)

H. L. Mencken