Baltimore Evening Sun (15 April 1913): 6.

Watch the Hon. William H. Anderson! He is up to something! He is hatching some new plot against the Rum Demon! Beware!--Adv.

The retirement of the Hon. Samuel E. Pentz, conzertmeister of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, removes from the field of moral endeavor one of its most assiduous and talented virtuosi. He had the mad, glad fervor of a Eugene Levering and the easy and fluent technique of a Charles Joseph Bonaparte. Such masters of the art are born, not hired. When they pass from the world they leave it in a state of almost perfect asepsis. If Baltimore is chemically pure today, if prostitution is but an evil memory, if all the frail ladies of yesteryear are now virtuously at work as opera singers and charwomen, if the jail bulges with sinners and crime has been reduced 99.9 per cent.--then let the credit go to the Hon. Mr. Pentz. We shall not look upon his like again!

Let no one take offense at the invidious comparisons that may lurk in this praise. I have no desire to be unjust to other practitioners of the celestial craft--for example, to the Rev. Dr. W. W. Davis, pontifex maximus of the estimable Lord’s Day Alliance. But, after all, the test of virtue, as of vice, is its success. Does it prevail? Does it work? Tested thus, the Hon. Mr. Pentz rises infinitely above the Rev. Dr. Davis. The latter, for all his pious passion, is still but halfway to triumph. He has scotched the Sabbath blutwurst, but the damnable Sunday sundae (blasphemous name!) still flourishes. He has stopped murders, mayhems and rapines at Back River, but he has yet to stop beer-bibbing. The Hon. Mr. Pentz fades from the scene with no such ifs and buts hanging over him. He has wiped out, with the easy grace of genius, the oldest profession in the world. He has done in Baltimore what all the popes and emperors failed to do in Rome. As Dr. Howard A. Kelly lately testified in Philadelphia, he has sent the social evil down for the count of ten. We shall not look upon his like again.

Book earnestly recommended to the Judges of the Supreme Bench, to the police magistrates, to the clergy of all denominations, to the members of the Police Board, the Liquor License Board and the Vice Commission, and to all other citizens interested in the problems of city government:

On the Enforcement of Law in Cities, By Brand Whitlock, Mayor of Toledo.

This book first appeared as a modest pamphlet in 1910. It was written by Mayor Whitlock in reply to certain clergymen who reviled him for failing to enforce the Blue Laws of Toledo to the letter. The first edition of a few thousand copies was immediately exhausted. Another and larger edition went the same way and the pamphlet became so rare that it fetched a premium in the second-hand book stores. Now it is reprinted in the form of a bound book. The publishers are the Bobbs-Merrill Company, of Indianapolis. You may get it in any book store for 75 cents.

It is the best 75 cents’ worth that the book stores have offered for a long, long while. It represents the mature reflections of a man who has devoted the best years of his life to the problems of city government--a man of honesty and intelligence, and what is more, a man of courage. The name of Brand Whitlock stands for all that is best in our national life. He is a reformer with no hint of Pecksniff in him. He is practical, tolerant, shrewd, thorough. He has not only talked of doing things: he has actually done them. Here, in this little book, he presents some of his conclusions about city government, the theories behind his work. It is a book so packed with frankness and common sense that it must take its place among the classics of politics.

Brief note from a satirical and anonymous correspondent:

You say that there are “not 20 politicians in Baltimore who could ever be as virtuous as the Hon. George R. Gaither, even if the death penalty were provided for failure.” Why make it 20? I defy you to name five who could do it.

Don’t be so sure, dear friend. Here are no less than seven:

The Hon. Phillips Lee Goldsborough, LL.D. The Hon. William Cabell Bruce. The Hon. McCay McCoy, C.E., K.T. The Hon. Charles Joseph Bonaparte, A.B.,. LL.D. The Hon. the super-Mahon, LL.B. The Hon. Samuel Summers Field, LL.B. The Hon. Sol. Warfield, H2O.

I do not say, mind you, that any of these gentlemen has yet come into actual competition with the Hon. Mr. Gaither. On his lofty pinnacle, wrapped in damp mists of formaldehyde, he still stands alone. But I believe that every one of the seven, with a little extra effort, might clamber up as far as his knees, or at least as far as his ankles. The potentialities of virtue are in them. They have the essential talent, the congenital flair. They are, as it were, the raw material of archangels. They are Gaithers in the larva stage, needing only a sudden shock to met their wings to fluttering.

Grading of the clubs in the National Tuberculosis League for the week ended March 22:

Baltimore......................465 Boston.......................297 Chicago..........................433 Cleveland..................267 Pittsburgh.......................413 Phila.................No report New York.......................410 St. Louis...........No report

Boil your drinking water! Cover your garbage can! Get ready to help Goucher again!

From the “Books Wanted” department of the Publishers’ Weekly for March 15:

Moravian Book Store, 146 Main St., Bethlehem, Pa: Three Weeks, Glyn.

Which would seem to indicate that the Moravians of Bethlehem are going some.

The estimable Democratic Telegram of this week boosts the Hon. Charles Whiteford for Clerk of Circuit Court No. 2, praises the late Music Festival and prints a very fair zinc etching of the Hon. Charles Kreuder, Jr., private secretary to the Hon. the super-Mahon. In addition, the Telegram offers a beautiful poem entitled “To Miss April,” composed by Col. Jacobus Hook, under the nom de plume of “George S. Stewart.” The Colonel has the authentic Parnassian gift: his poem is passionate without being licentious.–Adv.

That anonymous genealogist who lately rattled my family skeletons in the Letter Column returns to the disgraceful enterprise today. I let him rage and roar: however scandalous his discoveries may appear, it is comforting to reflect that he has not unearthed the worst.

Who is the most moral man in Baltimore? What baltimoralist is the champion of them all? Watch this space for his name!--Adv.

Boil your drinking water! Cover your garbage can! Viva l’embonpoint!