Baltimore Evening Sun (11 April 1913): 6.

Them ex-Sheriffs can’t make up their minds whether to go to Europe and blow in the money or to stay home and watch it draw interest.

SACRED to the memory of The Hon. Isaac Lobe Straus, LL. B., Orator, Juriconsult and Statesman, Cut Down in His Prime by the Toxic, Withering Kiss of the Hon. William H. Anderson. Vale!

The Right Hon. the super-Mahon to the ardent Hot Towel:

I regard the purchase of the land and the development of the valley of Gwynne Falls from Wilkens avenue to the Franklin road as one of the most important things which we have accomplished during this administration.

With all due respect to a great statesman, Bosh! The parking of the Gwynns Falls Valley is no more an enterprise of “this administration” than the covering of Jones’ falls, the paving of the streets or any other such inherited improvement. It was actually launched during the Hayes administration, by the late Major Richard M. Venable, then a City Councilman. So long ago as 1902 the city bought 360 acres of land along the falls at a cost of $264,180.83. The Hon. Thomas R. Clendenin was then president of the Park Board.

In 1903 he was succeeded by Major Venable, who at once proceeded to the purchase of more land and to the development of an elaborate scheme of improvement. By 1908 he had acquired, either by purchase or by gift, a continuous strip from Windsor Hills to Edmondson avenue and many detached lots to the southward. In addition, he had acquired most of the land needed for connecting the new park with Druid Hill. He employed landscape architects of the first rank to make the plans. He besought the people to provide the necessary money. During the closing years of his life, despite a painful and depressing illness, he gave practically his whole time to working out and promoting the scheme.

When Major Venable died and it was proposed to name a small park after him, as a testimony to his unselfish and unrewarded labors for this Gwynne Falls Park plan, a certain Sunday-school superintendent of Baltimore wrote letters to the newspapers protesting against it. It was indecent, he argued, to call a public park after a man who was in communion with no church. The name of that Sunday-school superintendent was the Hon. James Harry Preston. Since then, fortunately enough, the people of Baltimore have had an excellent opportunity to judge between the honest doubts of Richard M. Venable and the prehensible piety of the Hon. James Harry Preston.

From a letter by some anonymous miscreant in yesterday’s letter column:

Frederick III of Prussia * * * had as one of his privy council a certain Baron Mencken, who * * * had censorious charge of the King’s mail and reading matter. He was also, for a time, the court jester. He seems to have got into trouble with some of the ladies of the court and thereby lost the royal favor. * * * Mencken was a pawnbroker who owed his elevation to * * * having advanced the King considerable sums of money. * * *

A tissue of libels and imbecilities. Frederick III of Prussia never had a court jester, nor even a privy council. During the whole of his short reign, from March 9 to June 15, 1888, he was a dying man. But Frederick William III (1770-1840) did have a privy council, and one of its loveliest ornaments was the Hon. Anastasius Ludwig Mencken, LL. D. This Anastasius got into no trouble with ladies, save that he married five of them seriatim. Again, he was not a pawnbroker, but a bitter foe to pawnbrokers, and served his King by hanging 28 of them. In the end he was murdered by one of them, a fellow named Bacharach. This was at Potsdam, on January 16, 1801, and he was buried from his late residence on the Sunday following.

These few words in justice to a worthy and misunderstood man. He was the Aristides Sophocles Goldsborough of his day--an accomplished orator, the master of a voluptuous German style, an ardent greaser of his royal master. He was also a proficient performer upon the bass viol or bull-fiddle and introduced penochle into Germany. He died a Konigl. Preuss. Geheimerkabinettsrat and his 24 surviving children were all educated at the royal expense. Vale!

Inquiry addressed to the Rev. Dr. Carleton D. Harris, editor of the Southern Methodist and ardent custodian of other folks’ morals, on March 20:

Will Dr. Harris offer to defend the Merit Blood Tablets, advertised in the Southern Methodist, and particularly the manufacturers’ offer of two rings, one solid gold, for selling seven boxes of them? Seven boxes, at 25 cents apiece, come to $1.75. Does Dr. Harris think it possible to sell a solid gold ring for $1.75? If so, on what ground?

The Hon. John L. Krider in The Evening Sun Letter Column of March 22:

The Rev. Carleton D. Harris needs no defense from me or from anyone else, as he is able to take care of himself, and no doubt Mr. Mencken will be sorry he ever tackled him before Mr. Harris gets through with him.

Invitation to the Rev. Dr. Harris in this place, March 24:

Lay on, Tartuffe, and damned be him who first cries, Hold! Enough!

News item from the Sunpaper of April 9:

A party of 10 Baltimoreans, Virginians and Texans will assemble in the Hotel McAlpinn New York, Friday morning for the beginning of a three months’ tour to Palestine, Egypt and Italy, under the leadership of the Rev. Dr. Carleton D, Harris, who will surrender his duties temporarily as editor of the Baltimore Southern Methodist.

Let us all hope that the rev. gent. has taken a good supply of the Blood Tablets with him, and enough “solid gold” rings to outfit all the pilgrims at the holy places. A truly pious hajji should make liberal payment for the boon of the green turban. What more lordly thank offering than a “solid gold” ring for $1.75?

Dr. C. S. Carr, of Cincinnati, in Health for May:

I would like to make everyone thoroughly understand that coffee is a dope. Coffee is a narcotic--a very strong narcotic, too. * * * There is no drug in the pharmacopœia that has a more powerful effect upon the brain centres than coffee. Coffee is a dope and narcotic almost equal to opium. * * * Slowly but surely coffee gets control of its victim and holds him in its grasp, pitiful, helpless. * * * A coffee victim becomes nervous and horribly intemperate in speech, violent in the use of words, losing all sense of proportion and accuracy in his statements.

Respectfully referred to the Hon. Eugene Levering, reviler of the brewers--and coffee millionaire.

The Hon. William H. Anderson has agreed to sign the Harry petition as a charity job.--Adv.