Baltimore Evening Sun (7 July 1913): 6.

Up to midnight last night Col. Jacobus Hook had given away 27,680 cigars since January 1--which leaves Gen. James Young frozen to the starting post. If all goes well, the Colonel will give away a total of 52,700 during 1913. His highest past record was scored in 1912, when he gave away 39,275 cigars, 5,670 stogies, 9,020 lead pencils, 67 gold-headed canes, 2 horses, 18 sets of the works of Bulwer-Lytton, 3,200 copies of his annual report, 9 canary birds, a cow, a B-flat clarinet, and 17,992 Old Town Bank memorandum books.--Adv.

PROHIBITION AT WORK. The prohibition cause is marching on. During the fiscal year ending June 30 the number of saloons in the United States decreased by 18,000. During the same time the amount of whisky and brandy sold in the country increased by 7,500,000 gallons, and the amount of beer by 1,000,000 barrels. Obviously, prohibition really prohibits. That is to say. it prohibits the decent saloonkeeper.

Extract from a letter written by the Right Rev. Martin Luther to the Hon. Leonard Koppe, quoted in A. McGiffert’s “Martin Luther,” page 281:

That my father and mother and all my good friends may be the merrier, my Lord, Katharine and I beg you will send us as soon as possible, at my expense. a keg of the best Jorgan beer you can find. I will pay all the costs. I would have sent a wagon, but I did not know whether I could find what I wanted. For it must be seasoned and cool that it may taste well. If it is not good I have determined to punish you by making you drink all of it yourself! * * *

What would Luther have thought of a clergyman who used his pulpit to denounce all beer-drinkers as hogs and scoundrels? What would he have thought, in general, of the modern type of rough-house dominie? Of the clerical ward heeler, ordered about by Mahons in long coats and bogus haloes? Of the sacerdotal press agent roaring in all pastures but his own?

The announcement of Prof. Dr. Sylvester Richard Withers, candidate for Congress in the Third district, is sent in by my political scouts, and it is a pleasure to give the good professor this free boost. His platform is simplicity itself: he is against the Medical Trust and the Moving Picture Trust, and he promises, if elected, to give the common people relief from both. The stealings of the former, he says, now amount to $500,000,000 a year and of the latter $200,000,000. This enormous sum will be saved to the innocent vulgar if the professor is sent to the halls of Congress.

His fight against the Moving Picture Trust, I fear, will be a very hard one, and so I hesitate to predict its success, but when he tackles the Medical Trust he will be on safer ground, for he is privy to the secret extortions of that hellish octupus and has already done good exectution against it--chiefly, it would appear, by the invention of cheap and sure cures for diseases which the rascals of Johns Hopkins treat ineffectively and at great cost to the sick. For example, tuberculosis. Professor Withers has discovered that this malady is caused by a “mycrobe” of “low origin” and that it is “easy, very easy to kill, after preliminary organization, in some public hall.” He offers, as a public test, to cure six cases of tuberculosis in eight days. During the second week he will cure 12 and during the third week 24, and so on ad infinitum.

Rheumatism is another disease which yields almost instantly to the learned professor’s revolutionary art. Its cause, he says, is “paralysis of the lymphatic glands in the parts affected,” and if it is of recent onset he guarantees to cure it in 24 hours. If it is chronic he takes eight days. At the Johns Hopkins Hospital the average running time for a vigorous case of rheumatism is 17 years and 6 months, and the record is 94 years. I myself have suffered from the malady since the autumn of 1887, and have expended, during that time, the sum of $368,000 upon drugs and doctor’s bills. Strike off the $758 1 have received by the sale of empty medicine bottles, and my net expense has been $367,242. And I still have rheumatism in 58 of my 62 joints.

But the professor’s masterpiece is his cure for “pneumonia fever,” which is caused, he says, by “that Hastilis Mycrobe, Diplo-cocci of Pneumonia.” This fearful coccus, in the opinion of Dr. W. S. Thayer and other such old-timers, is practically unscotchable, for all the drugs which corrode it corrode the patient even more. Fuming sulphuric acid, for example, will kill it in 20 minutes, but no patient has ever been able to hold fuming sulphuric acid in his mouth that long. Professor Withers, however, has perfected an antiseptic which makes its murder “as easy as killing bedbugs with sledge hammers.” He agrees to cure 100 patients in 24 hours, which works out to one patient every 14.4 minutes.

The voters of the Third district will be recreant to opportunity if they do not send Professor Withers to Congress. He is obviously a man whose bold and original thinking would find its appropriate field and atmosphere in that exalted assemblage. The New Thought, indeed, is fast becoming dominant in Congress. The House of Representatives fills up with progressives of all schools–medical, political and sociological. It becomes a sanhedrin of “experts,” a convocation of uplifters. And in the Senate, so I hear, the Christian Science element is already strong enough to vote down the old doctrine that corn licker to the one sovereign specific for cramps, astigmatism, treachery, warts, balditude, lack of appetite and snake bite.

The estimable Democratic Telegram of this week adorns its first page with an excellent tintype of the Hon. Howard W. Jackson, Register of Wills of our fair city. So suave and popular is the Hon. Mr. Jackson that many Baltimoreans are committing suicide in order to have their wills registered before the expiration of his term. In its literary department the Telegram explains at great length that the Hon. Dashing Harry has no desire whatever to be a United States Senator, but is willing to sacrifice himself that Baltimore may get its rights. Much other such waggish stuff makes this one of the best of recent issues of a very able weekly paper.–Adv.

A DAILY THOUGHT. Aequo animo paratoque moriar.—Marcus Tullius Cicero.

Boil your drinking water! A Chautauqua salute for the Hon. Young Cochran! Swat the fly!

The more you don’t hear nothing much about Dan Loden, the more surer you can be he is right on the job.–Adv.