Baltimore Evening Sun (7 April 1913): 6.

The Hon. Ferdinand J. Young, eldest grandson of the late Brigham Young, D. D., is a genial and contented old bachelor of 68 years. Disdaining the very sight of woman, he occupies a monastic cell in the Y. M. C. A. lamasery at Denver, Col. Oh, you Eugenics!—Adv.

Caffeine versus kaifing! The archangels versus the Rum Demon!

Program of debates at the spring semester of the Concord Club:

Resolved, That the Hon. the super-Mahon is a greater man than Cagliostro. Resolved, That Jake ought to come across with the cheers.

The estimable Democratic Telegram of this week prints a crude wood cut of the Hon. R. Keith Compton—so crude, indeed, that it makes him appear to be wearing a rat in his hair. In addition, the Telegram has a kind word to say for the late J. Pierpont Morgan, gives nice little boosts to the Hon. MM. Steve Little and John Pleasants, advises all organization Democrats to attend the.Music Festival at the Lyric, and reads me a long lecture on Constitutional law. Regarding this last, more anon. I must consult my solicitors.—Adv.

The more them ex-sheriffs think it over, the more they make up their minds jurisprudence has got penochle skinned a mile.—Adv.

The Hon. Bob Padgett is going to the Concord Club’s bal masque disguised as the Lowest Responsible Bidder.—Adv.

The demi-tasse! The demi-tasse! Oh, wreath it ’round with laurels! It soothes the stomach, cools the brain and titillates the morals!

Whatever the precise effect of the impending constitutional amendment for the direct election of Senators, connoisseurs may still rest assured that the next session of the Legislature will be a hot one. The continuance of hostilities between Republican standpatters and Bull Moosers makes an overwhelming Democratic majority a certainty, and an overwhelming majority, whether Democratic or Republican, insures the control of both houses by professional politicians and a great efflorescence of purely political enterprise. Such enterprise, as everyone knows, means scandal, and such scandal means news, and such news means refined and continuous entertainment for the plain people.

The Hon. William H. Anderson, capo comico of the Anti-Saloon League and an astute student of wishbones and tea-grounds, is already giving warning of what we may expect. The “liquor ring,” he says, in making ready for a long series of complex deviltries. It may even go to the length of passing a burlesque local-option bill, cunningly devised to deceive the pious. And having done that, it will probably undertake a general revision of the election laws, with the aim and purpose of scoring on the pious again. Such is the present belief and prognostication of the Hon. Mr. Anderson, who is one of the most accomplished political necromancers of profane history.

Unluckily enough, the hon. gent. confines his divinations to legislation directly affecting the Anti-Saloon League, and does not go into the subject of miscellaneous buccaneering. But here, no doubt, there will be an equal display of statesmanlike ingenuity. The public service corporations may look forward with confidence to shedding large globules of frigid sweat; there will be benign tinkering with the Public Utilities Commission; one may expect with confidence a battle over a new charter for Baltimore city, with well enough made worse as a result. And there will be, without a doubt, an unprecedented crop of private bills, each with its concealed serpent.

A lamentable prospect, but after all, why repine? It is an open question whether a crooked session of the Legislature is actually worse than a reform session. When the reformers get hold of things at Annapolis, it is usually after a long and bitter fight, and so they are filled to the neck with bogus panaceas and the spirit of revenge. The inevitable consequence is a great body of fantastic and unenforcable law, providing sustenance and merriment to the courts for years afterward. In brief, they try to reform the whole State government at one fell swoop, an obvious and ludicrous impossibility. And out of their failure grows a devastating reaction. One reform Legislature is all that the people can stand. The moment it adjourns they begin bawling for the exiled professionals.

A crooked session, whatever its crimes, at least has this one merit: that it doesn’t attempt to bring the millennium overnight. The main virtue of a professional politician, indeed, is that he understands the people thoroughly, and particularly the morals of the people, and particularly the limitations of their morals. He knows that they detest a stark and uncompromising virtue almost as much am they detest a burglary in which they have no share, and so he attempts no prodigies of purification. Instead, he strives to give them a good show. They like a good show a great deal more than they like anything else.

Well, well, why not? Life is short—and goodness is painful. The worst of all foes of a high old time must needs admit that it is agreeable while it lasts. So reason the professional politicians. They know they are going to be scotched once in a while, that an outraged yeomanry is going to rise against them, but they also know that the uprising will not last for long, that it is much worse in prospect than it will ever be in realization. And so they play the game and take their chances. At long, long intervals a careless participant is burned. At shorter intervals there are alarming singeings. But the vast majority of politicians get away with it. The vast majority go to their graves in far better odor and honor than the reformers, who strive in vain to put them out of business.

Standing of the clubs in the National Tuberculosis League for the week ended March 16:

Baltimore.......................519 New York.........................377 St. Louis..........................465 Cleveland.........................338 Boston.............................417 Pittsburgh.........................206 Chicago...........................388 Philadelphia................no rept.

The father of the late John A. Johnson, who would have been President of the United States today had he lived, was the village drunkard and his mother was a washerwoman. The mother of H. G. Wells was a lady’s maid and his father was an unsuccessful corner grocer. The father of the Hon. Jack Johnson died of tuberculosis at 26. The mother of August Strindberg was a servant girl of dubious virtue. Four of the eight great-grandparents of S. Coleridge Taylor were probably cannibals. Oh, you Eugenics!—Adv.