Baltimore Evening Sun (15 March 1913): 6.

Secret information for moralists in general practice: The Hon. Barratt O’Hara, Lieutenant-Governor of Illinois and Captain-General of the latest vice crusade, is the author of “From Figg to Johnson,” the best history of pugilism ever written. He wrote it five or six years ago, while serving as sporting editor of Hearst’s Chicago Examiner. His descriptions of some of the great ring battles of the past are almost lyrical in their eloquence. Let me suggest that chapters from this magnum opus be read at all meetings of vice crusaders, as chapters from “Science and Health” are read at all meetings of Christian Scientists.

How to save Goucher: Get rid of the old women in pantaloons. Can the press agents. Let up on the theatre. Teach dancing in the gymnasium. Amalgamate with the Johns Hopkins. Do these things, and all the money needed will be raised in a week.

Boil your drinking water! Cover your garbage can! Down with rum! Down with cocaine! Down with caffeine!

More magical, even, than chiropractic, a greater boon than osteopathy, a juicier graft than Christian Science--such is astrology, an old art made new. I here whisper no secret; the news is being sent all over the country, at second-class rates, by Professor Llewellyn George, F. A. S., of Portland, Ore., the modern Paracelsus. Professor George operates the Llewellyn College of Astrology at Portland (apparently in P. O. Box 638) and is now on an eager hunt for pupils. He offers to teach me the whole art for $10 cash, and if I can’t raise all that cash, he agrees to take a dollar or two on account and to trust me for the rest.

In addition, Professor George offers to sell me a bottle of his Planetary Hair Grower at the inside price of $1, and to throw in full directions free. This Planetary Hair Grower is no brother to the common unguents and elixirs of the barber shops, but a transcendental and ineffable tonic, of star grease and moon madness all compact. Says Professor George:

Not only are the ingredients of this tonic made from the purest herbs, etc.. but it is carefully prepared by us under proper benefic planetary influences at their auspicious times. As a further assurance of its merits and productive qualities, we prepare and furnish you with the dates of the proper phases of the moon, and the proper days in the periods, showing when to use our tonic for the best results.

The professor also gives a boost to Magic Secretive Oil, an extremely powerful and useful preparation, though he does not manufacture it himself. It is made at the Kosmos Sanitarium, 2112 Sherman avenue, corner of Simpson street, Evanston, Ill., which is also the headquarters for the Blood Purifier and Nervo Builder Tea. The Magic Secretive Oil costs $1.05 a bottle, postage paid. The Blood Purifier sells at 55 cents a pound. Rub yourself with the one and take a daily swig of the other, and you will be as free from aches and spavins as a Christian Scientist. And if, by any chance, they don’t work, then you may go to the Kosmos Sanitarium and take its “cold water treatments, sun and air baths, homeopathy, physicial culture, magnetism, etc.” And if you haven’t the money for so long a journey, Dr. H. E. Lane, the resident chirurgeon, will give you homeopathy and magnetism by mail.

Professor George publishes a monthly journal in the interest of Esoteric and Mundane Astrology. It is called the Astrological Bulletina and is hospitable to the announcements of other and even rival pundits. For example, it gives a quarter of a page to Prof. A. W. Martens, N. A., of Burlington, Iowa, who teaches Mental Fascination by mail, and is the author of standard textbooks upon “The Divinity of Desire,” “How to Secure a Beautiful Complexion” and “The Yogi Philosophy.” Again, it gives space to Prof. A. J. Straughan’s Astro-Biochemistry, to the Concentro, a new device for concentrating the mind, and to the Lyon Gyro Suspender, this last a new gallus for New Thoughters. But of all these great inventions more anon. Meanwhile I have sent for a carboy of the Planetary Hair Grower and shall try it on the Hon. MM. Max Ways and Wilbur F. Coyle.

An anonymous defender of the Hon. Eugene Levering, in the Letter Column:

Let the Free Lance show that coffee hurts the people as muych as rum. How many homes does coffee break up? How many murders does coffee cause?

An apparently sound defense, but one, alas, that goes to pieces on inspection. I have never maintained that coffee causes murders or that it breaks up homes, though I suppose I could get moral evidence to that effect if I tried. All I have maintained is that coffee contains an alkaloid called caffeine, and that the use of caffeine is deletertous, and that the sale of it, in consequence, is as immoral as the sale of any other drug.

Caffeine and alcohol differ in degree, but not in kind. Both are drugs. Both poison the body and corrupt the mind. In the very same way, beer and whisky differ in degree, but not in kind. Every schoolboy knows, for example, that a single pint of beer could not conceivably cause a murder or break up a home, whereas a single pint of whisky might do both. But do the Hon. Mr. Levering and his friends therefore make a distinction between beer and whisky--i. e., between a mild and probably harmless poison, and a powerful and obviously dangerous poison? They do not. Less than two weeks ago they were printing a flaming advertisement reviling brewers as well as distillers, and expressing astonishment that any man engaged in the manufacture and sale of alcohol in any form should be admitted to decent society.

Well, if the sale of alcohol is thus sufficient to make a man an outlaw, why shouldn’t that outlawry extend to the sellers of other drugs? For example, caffeine. What ground is there for believing that the sale of one drug is more moral than the sale of another drug? It caffeine leaves the hands lily-white, why should alcohol stain them? Is there, perhaps, a graduated scale of drugs, ranged in the order of their morality? Then what is the position of caffeine? Is it above or below cocaine, above or below Peruna, above or below nicotine? If it is below, why is it below? In what essential is it more grateful to the moral sense than any other drug? In just what way does the man who sells it become a great moral leader, with an unlimited license to denounce and excommunicate the lowly rum-seller?

The cigarette! The cigarette! Beware, or it will get you yet! Oh, many and many a mother’s pet hath perished in its awful net! On every hand its snares are set! The cigarette! The cigareette!