Baltimore Evening Sun (24 June 1913): 6.

Moral remark of the dear old Hot Towel:

There were statements in [the Hon.] Mr. Anderson’s letter to The Sun which should never have been written and never printed. * * * And this is not the first time The Sun has been compelled to stand sponsor for wrongdoing. * * *

Does the Towel argue, then, that a newspaper is responsible for all the consequences, however remote and unforeseen, of literature admitted to its public columns. If so, then the Towel must blush a bit when it thinks of the hospitality it has accorded to fortune tellers, patent medicine quacks and abortionists.

Some anonymous communicant of Grace and St. Peter’s Church (certainly it can’t be Vestryman Dashing Harry!) accuses me in today’s Letter Column of misquoting recent remarks of the Rev. Romilly F. Humphries, rector of the church. There is no merit whatever in this accusation. My quotations from Dr. Humphries were accurate, and what is more, they were fair. That is to say, they very fairly represented his argument, from which, in proof, I extract the following passages:

1. By legislation, which is enforced community action, you can make conditions wholesome and pure. You can make men live in cleanliness and decency, and you can reduce to the minimum the ravages of yellow fever.
2. It is a logical step to enter the realm of economics and industry. We can compel good factory and working conditions.
3. In the realm of morals we need not hesitate to enter. * * * Experience has shown that the ubiquitous saloon, as at present constituted, is a menace. etc., etc. * * * Both morals and prosperity can be much improved by legislation.

If yellow fever and the saloon are not plainly hooked up in this argument, then the English language is to me a sealed book. And if such hooking up is justified by the character of the two things, or by the attitude of normal human beings toward them, then my simple and last request is that I be shot at sunrise.

Solemn warning in this place on Friday afternoon:

Watch Anderson, gents! He is up to same new deviltry, some fresh and worse chicanery!

And within 18 hours he had put it over, and was crowding Woodrow off the front pages. But the worst, alas, is yet to come. Unless my spies lie, he is hatching something that will make all of his previous tricks seem like the puerile efforts of intoxicated babies. Stop! Look! Listen!

We bachelors protest at last against our immemorial freedom from taxation. Don’t waste time trying to tax our incomes: the mere force of habit will make us swear off that tax as we have always sworn off the taxes upon our realty and personalty. Make it a straight tax of a dollar a day, payable daily. Give us a fair chance to help bear the burdens of civilization. Let us show that we, too, are patriots.

My excellent friend, Mrs. S. M. Farrell, the anti-vivisectionist, had at me in last Thursday’s Letter Column for the crime of reviling anti-vivisectionist “experts.” Specifically, she called upon me to accuse those “experts” who, in my opinion, are either “notorious liars” or “notoriously unreliable.” It is a pleasure to do this, and with the utmost frankness. All witnesses brought into court by anti-vivisectionists may be divided roughly into two classes, as follows:

1. Competent medical men whose honest objections to the results of definite experiments are distorted into silly objections to all experiments, and, by implication, to all scientific medicine.
2. Medical ignoramuses or charlatans whose value as experts exists wholly in the anti- vivisectionist imagination.

Some of the latter, such as Dr. George Wilson, are simply ignorant and bumptious. (See, for example, his reference to the “Pasteur * * * so-called cure for rabies” on page 137 of the final report of the Royal Commission on Vivisection.) Others, such as Dr. Edward Berdoe, editor of the Zoophilist, are deliberate bearers of false witness. I know of no anti-vivisectionist “expert” who falls into neither class. In so far as I have any acquaintance with them (and I have devoted much time to studying their proclamations) they are all either obviously ignorant or obviously disingenuous, and usually they are both. There is no current propaganda, indeed, which has produced so many fluent liars as the attack upon scientific medicine, and the twin leaders of that propaganda, the Hon. Stephen Coleridge and Miss Lind-af-Hageby, have actually enjoyed the honor of having their veracity formally denied by courts of justice.

I have, unfortunately, too little space to go over the whole list again, fake by fake. At one time or another in the past I have discussed the failings of almost all of them, both English and American. As new ones bob up, it will be a pleasure to consider their competency and habits of deceit. But, if Mrs. Farrell will permit the observation, I sicken of the Taylors, the Berdoes, the Wilsons and the Thorndikes. The bosh of these distinguished comedians grows stale. And stale, too, are the old, old “edited” quotations from honest and useful men.

The estimable Democratic Telegram of this week adorns itself with a small but elegant portrait of the Hon. Stephen C. Little, Clerk of the Superior Court and an excellent and efficient public servant. It is a pleasure to second the Telegram’s praise of Mr. Little, and of his polite and diligent deputies. I offer $50 cash to anyone who can think of a single sound reason for voting against him in November and promise to throw all claimants down The Sun office steps.

Anti-suffragist--One who neglects her home for her home’s good.

Suffragist--One who neglects her home for her home’s good.

The Hon. J. Cookman Boyd, attorney for Ex-Sheriff Bill Green, during yesterday’s proceedings in the City Court:

This is a newspaper case. The newspapers have kept it stirred up.

One of the best apologies ever offered for the crimes of newspapers.

Affecting tribute of the Hon. Alexander Geddes, poet laureate, to a heaven-kissing statesman and theologian:

James Harry Preston, understand,
Possesses looks sublime;
And in his geniality
He gets there every time.

What! Every time? Well, say usually.

Let the Hon. Robert Lee Ulman go down into profane history as the man who threw the Rum Demon’s towel into the ring.

Boil your drinking water! Cover your garbage can! Kiss the Rum Demon good-by!