Baltimore Evening Sun (21 June 1913): 6.

City bank deposits at the close of business on Wednesday, as reported by today’s Municipal Journal:

National Marine Bank $473,994.17 National Bank of Commerce 312,541.50 The next highest bank 185,368.83 Calvert Bank 170,269.26

What! Can it be that the Hon. Messrs. Dashing Harry and Gwynn give up? Are they to allow the Hon. Messrs. Littig and Fahnestock to put it over them? Let us hope not. What is more, let us note that the betting odds are 20 to 1 against it. The flood of money from the city stock sale seems to have sent the City Register’s clerks after false gods. By the day of the next bank statement, two weeks hence, that heathenry will be corrected.

THE CASE AGAINST PURITANISM. “What does your city need most?” was a question asked of Mayor O’Neill of Auburn, to which he replied, “Sunday baseball.” It was not a frivolous reply. In all communities the greatest needs are moral needs. The right to decent, harmless amusement and exercise on Sunday becomes a moral need when by hypocrisy and the tyranny of illiberalism that right is denied. The right of the workingman or boy on his only free day to play ball if he so prefers is as important to him as any other right of personal freedom open to arbitrary abridgement. Auburn would be a better town to live in, its youth would be more healthful, its illicit Sunday saloons less prosperous, its citizens less discontented and resentful, if the right of Sunday sports were recognized. Future civilization will look back with amazement upon a time when a minority in the great State of New York were permitted to dictate to a majority how they should or should not employ their one weekly day of rest.—The New York World.

In reckoning on Thursday the total revenue that would be yielded by the proposed dollar-a-day tax on bachelors, I fell into a considerable error. That is to say, I assumed that the number of bachelors above the age of 30 in the United States was but 2,385,000. As a matter of fact, the number is probably nearer 3,000,000. The exact figures for 1910 are yet to be published, but it is easy to deduce therefrom the figures for 1900, when the number of bachelors above 30 was 2,302,000. Between 1900 and 1910 the general population of the United States increased by nearly 22 percent. No doubt the bachelors increased at a great ratio, on account of the spread of education and the consequent decline of marriage, but assuming that the ratio was but 22 per cent., the number reached 2,800,000 by 1910. During the three years since 1910 at least 200,000 have been added.

A dollar-a-day tax on bacbelors would thus yield the Government the enormous surn of $1,095,000,000 a year, or $404,000,000 more than its total net ordinary receipts for 1912. Even supposing that 25 per cent. of the living bachelors above 30 were forced into matrimony by the proposed tax, the receipts therefrom would still be above $750,000,000. But there is no likelihood that such a result would follow. By the time a bachelor reaches 30 he is almost always rich enough to pay a dollar-a-day tax without difficulty, and besides, it would be plain to the meanest understanding that marriage would cost more.

It has been proposed by the New York Evening Post, the Boston Transcript and other papers that widowers and divorcés be taxed at the same rate as bachelors, but this is opposed by President Wilson and influential members of both Houses, and with good reason. The average widower, according to the Census Bureau, has 2.174 children to support, and the average divorcé pays $9.73 a week alimony. Obviously, it would be unjust to burden these men with further imposts. Again, it would be unwise, as Minority Leader Mann has proposed, to extend the tax to bachelors between the ages of 25 and 30, for a great many men, between those ages, are contemplating matrimony, and need all the money they can scrape up. But after 30 it is safe to assume the existence of a definite intent to remain single, and so the tax is properly applicable.

My learned and excellent friend Dr. R. Swinburne Clymer, of Allentown, Pa., writes to me that the Beverly Institute of Sacred Science, of which he is founder and dean, is now ready for business, and that students who care to avail themselves of its summer courses had better enroll early. The Beverly Institute is housed in Mitrenga Hall, a structure in “refined colonial style,” erected “through the hearty co-operation of several individuals,” and is located four miles from Allentown, in the midst of a smiling country. There are the favorite brews of the New Thought, both hell and dunkel are constantly on tap, and, in addition, the good doctor teaches Alchemy, Egyptian Initiation, Rational Mysticism, Soul Science and the Aeth Philosophy of Healing.

The Aeth system is the doctor’s own invention, and instruction in it is reserved for those who have mastered Soul Science. Both are based, it would appear, on “the International System of Magnetic (Alchemic) Healing,” which the doctor began to teach by correspondence in 1906. Many of his students demanded more knowledge than could be wrung out of this Alchemic Healing, and the result was the invention of Soul Science. Their thirst being still unsatisfied, the Aeth Philosophy was added. This philosophy, however, is so recondite that only the gifted few can comprehend it. It is taught, not by “class, or formal teaching,” but by “personal interviews and guidance,” to the end that the learner may become “an intelligent generator and transmitter of Aeth vitality.”

But if you lack the fine, sharp cerebrum needed for the comprehension of the Aeth, the doctor will be glad to feed you the lesser wisdom suited to your talents. For example, “the Science of Breath, as taught by the Oriental Initiates.” Again, “the Science of the Sun Bath, the Dew Bath and the Internal Bath.” Yet again, the heavenly triumvirate of “Mental, Spiritual and Youth Culture.” Finally, “the teachings of the Rosicrucian schools of thought.” You may suck up these sciences singly, or take them in combination. The good doctor doesn’t give a hoot what your choice may be, so long as you send in your fee to the purser (who is the doctor himself). And with every matriculation certificate he will give you a chance to buy his great work on “Alchemy and the Alchemists” at an inside price, available only to the true illumunati.