Baltimore Evening Sun (1 April 1913): 6.

Full list of county papers that have accepted the super-Mahon’s frank offer of paid advertising in return for their support:

The hot weather, I daresay, will bring us a sort of hiatus or interregnum in the Vice Crusade. One of the benign fruits and usufructs of summer! As the mercury goes up the passion for moral endeavor goes down. Not even the Hon. Charles J. Bonaparte would care to go gunning for the erring on a July afternoon. Only the Rev. Dr. W. W. Davis, so far as I can make out, keeps it up all summer, and even he, I believe, doesn’t accomplish much until Septetnber. The great majority of the moralists frankly throw up the sponge about June 1, and are heard of no more until the first frost.

But if the hot weather is thus unsuitable for the violent exercise of the chase, it is admirably fitted for sports less strenuous. For example, baseball. Here is a game that offers exertion without overexertion--a gentle and entertaining mingling of muscular activity and physical fascination. It is open to old and young, the sinful and the chemically pure. It charms without demoralizing; it fatigues without exhausting; it diverts without bringing on hysterics. An almost perfect recreation for those who tire of eloquence and indignation. A sport royal, and almost celestial.

Wherefore and by reason of which I propose that the Vice Crusaders get together a baseball club and meet their butts and opponents on the shaven mead. They must be tired, by now, of the dialectic. Their larynxes and lachrymal ducts must cry for a truce. Their surcharged arteries must weep for relaxation, a relief of tension, an end of high pressure. Baseball offers them what they need. What is more, it offers their foes what they need--i. e., a rest from reviling. Both sides would be benefited enormously by a short series of friendly games. The effect could not fail to be a weakening of antagonisms, a revival of Christian charity, a great effloresence of gemuethlichkeit. And that is what this town needs even more than it needs virtue. Feuds grow too savage here. Too many bitter hatreds arise out of trivial differences. The coffee men, for example, are too eager to consign the Pilsener men to hell, and the Pilsener men are too eager to drag the coffee men with them.

Therefore, I now formally propose a series of baseball games, say six in all, between the Vice Crusaders and their critics, the expenses and receipts to be equally divided, and all swearing and other rowdyism to be rigorously prohibited. And in furtherance of the plan I hereby nominate the following to the two nines:

CRUSADERS. SINNERS. Bonaparte, p. Logan, p. Kelly, c. Grgurevich, c. Janney, 1b. Grannan, 1b. Hooker, 2b. O’Dunne, 2b. Honner, 3b. ? , 3b. Pentz, s.s. Anderson, s.s. Carton. l.f. Mencken, l.f. Straton, c.f. ? , c.f. Murray, r.f ? , r.f. Umpire--Dr. Walker.

Don’t let the four blanks in the Sinners nine deceive you; they do not indicate a paucity of players, but an embarrassing superfluity of players. No less than 15 clergymen, 7 high police officials, 374 physicians and surgeons and 6 members of the judiciary are on the bench. The Sinners Club, indeed, is actually burdened with talent and there is no doubt whatever that many likelye candidates will reveal themselves in the tryouts. The Crusaders show a full nine merely because they are better organized and have played together in the past. They, too, have a fine bench of reserves, including 12 college professors, 2 Police Commissioners, a converted actor, a coffee king, 2 archdeacons, 47 clergymen and several superannuated chirurgeons.

Can there be any reasonable objection to these games? I think not. Baseball is a clean and manly sport; it is uncorrupted by gambling; it is patronized by women and children. And no man can deny, I believe, that such a series of encounters on the greensward would promote good feeling and good humor. It is impossible to hate a man whose home run you have scotched by a clever running catch. It is impossible to doubt the sense and virtue of a man who has struck you out with three vibrant inshoots.

From a gentleman subscribing himself the Hon. H. Crawford Diems and giving Brooklyn-sur-Patapsco as his address, comes the following proposal for a semi-moral cocktail:

Fill a No. 7 beer stein with equal quantities of buttermilk and Pilsener. Sweeten with 3 tablespoonfuls of black molasses. Lastly float a liberal quantity of sausage gravy over it, and grate enough nutmeg over the gravy to cover it. Suck slowly through a straw.

A benign invention, revolting, perhaps, to the neophyte, but appetizing to the connoisseur. However, there is an even better cocktail current in the kaifs. It is called the Boozehound and is the device of the Hon. Ed. Hirsch. Thus the process of its materialization:

Squeeze a tear into half a bar glass of vichy and add a melted gumdrop. Now fill the glass with equal parts of orangeade, listerine and cold tea. Add a pinch of caffeine and a dash of Peruna. Shake. Decorate with violets. Serve.

Then there is the Suffragette, still a purely theoretical drink, for no one has yet mustered up courage enough to drink it. Thus:

Cut a sinner’s throat and collect a sufficiency of his blood in a test-tube. Add dashes of gunpowder, prussic acid and ground glass. Garnish with lilies of the valley and staphylococci. Make your will.

Spring, b’gosh! The flowers are peeping out in the city parks. Prof. Alexander Geddes is wearing a purple necktie. They are whitewashing the trees at Back River. Spring!

I have lately published several lists of men and things denounced by local moralists since January 1, 1909. These lists, however, are so far incomplete. I desire to make them absolutely complete, and to publish them in one long, alphabetical list, carefully annotated. May I ask the help of all connoisseurs in this learned and useful labor? May I ask, in particular, that additions and suggestions be sent to me before April 15?

The boomers! The boomers! Their knell, I fear, will never ring! A tiger for the demitasse and the Hon. Eugene Levering!