Baltimore Evening Sun (31 July 1913): 6.

The Hon. Charles J. Ogle in praise of his favorite political tipple:

As [the Hon.) Woodrow Wilson once expressed it, the initiative and referendum is like a shotgun behind the door to keep order.

The same shotgun, no doubt, whose late owner didn’t know it was loaded.

The Hon. Thomas Francis Farnan, Prefect of Police, to a gaping reporter:

Kissing isn’t necessary.

I am with you, Montsewer le Prefect, as always! What do people see in kissing, anyhow? What is the precise charm? I have asked hundreds who seem to like it, but have yet to hear a reasonable answer. Certainly, the physical sensation is far from agreeable. Prolonged to more than four or five seconds (as seems to be customary among its professors), it becomes a sensation of downright suffocation. All the gross symptoms of asphyxia are present--a rush of blood to the capital capillaries, a froglike bulging of the eyes, cold perspiration in glittering globules, Cheyne-Stokes breathing. A man kissing, in brief, has the exact aspect of a man drowning–he is a startling and revolting spectacle.

Why, then, should any man go to trouble and expense to indulge in this disagreeable sport? Why should it be regarded as a necessary ingredient of common politeness? I suppose the answer is to be found in the tryannical nature of women. They make men kiss them merely to show their authority. They know that men do not like to do it, and therefore they insist upon it. It is for the same reason that they make men wear dress clothes. No sane and healthy man likes to wear a dress coat. It is intensely uncomfortable, and it makes him look like an organ-grinder’s monkey. But he is forced to do it by feminine opinion, which is frankly grounded upon a desire to make him ridiculous and ill at ease. It is thus that women prove their power.

EFFECTS OF PURITANISM

[From the New York World.] Describing in the Outlook his experience as a Police Commissioner in New York, Mr. Roosevelt says: “I had been told that it was not possible to close the saloons on Sunday, and that I could not succeed. However, I did succeed.” Mr. Roosevelt succeeded also in making Van Wyck Mayor and in giving the Police Department over to Dewey. He succeeded too in making a majority of the voters believe that a reform administration necessarily meant meddling with personal liberty. In the reaction that followed Mr. Roosevelt’s blue Sunday crusade the police discovered the value of the privileges they had to sell, and thus the System intrenched itself.

The vice crusade now enters upon its second and loveliest stage. That is to say, it becomes a general assault and pursuit with all arms, to the tune of “Throw ’Em Out, McClusky.” In every neighborhood the whispered word is going ’round, and pussy-footed Misses are on the march. In that fair slum where I live myself the populace is all het up. On four separate occasions I have been invited to join in the snouting, but have been forced to decline for lack of time. Every kaffeeklatsch in the whole region is meeting daily, and with 275 pounds of steam in the gauge. The grand jury, I daresay, is getting many anonymous letters from thereabouts.

The charming thing about this huggermugger neighborhood snouting is that, once it is fairly under way, it is no longer dependent upon a supply of authentic victims. Bit by bit, all boarding houses harboring women under 70 years of age are brought under suspicion. For a single woman. to take a flat is damning proof. For two women to take a flat together is legal evidence that they are running a disorderly house. The police, before long, will be solemnly forbidding such women to have phonographs or to sell liquor to minors. Any woman, living alone, who ventures to receive a visit from a man, even the gas man, is now publicly posted and excoriated.

Such is human existence under a moral snoutocracy. Such is government by the long. damp nose. By the laws of Maryland, true enough, every person to supposed to be reputable until proved the reverse, and by the same laws, though few moralists seem to know it, a woman actually taken in sin still has inalienable rights. Her mere residence in a house does not make it disorderly under the statute. She is free to live wherever she pleases. What is more, her lack of virtue is not, in itself, a punishable offense. The law still throws its cloak around her: she does not become an outlaw by the simple fact of adopting a disagreeable profession. But what is the law among moralists? What are human rights when the blood is up and the bugle sounds and the bloodhounds beggin to bay?

A DAILY THOUGHT. The concealment of the truth is the only sin known to science.--Eduard Westermarck.

The estimable Democratic Telegram of this week embellishes its first page with a large crayon portrait of the Hon. Harry C. Gaither, J., one of the learned jurists of the Orphans’ Court bench. The Hon. Mr. Gaither is a just and assiduous judge, and deserves to have kind things said about him. Would that others were as virtuous! In its literary section the Telegram presents excellent arguments against the Hon. William H. Anderson, that satanic fellow, and announces formally that the Hon. Blair Lee will not be opposed by the Hon. D. Harry. If you don’t read the Telegram, you miss the most entertaining weekly paper published in Maryland.--Adv.

The Hon. Charles J. Ogle, prophet of the initiative and referendum, supported his case in yesterday’s Letter Column by quoting from an old article of mine on woman suffrage. It is a pleasure to give the hon. gent. this humane assistance. If he will have a little patience, I shall try to dig up even better arguments for him. As it is, he faces the staggering task of carrying on his propaganda without any arguments at all. But of all this, more anon.

Boil your drinking water! Give us more raids at Back River! Watch the working girl! Swat the fly!

The Rev. Dr. Charles Fiske on present discontents:

The committee of the Men and Religion Movement, which gave the subject special study, sums up the result of its investigations and conferences in an appeal for a new crusade for the rescue of the home.

What! Another? A cop in every parlor! Searchlights at the domestic hearth!