Baltimore Evening Sun (11 September 1913): 6.

In today’s Letter Column Archdeacon Wegg, of Belair, offers a graphic account of my hurried trip from New York to answer the summons of the late grand jury. This account, I may say at once, is very accurate. I did come home by special train, as the learned prelate says, and I did distribute propagandist literature en route. What is more, I saw the archdeacon himself on the platform at Van Bibber, clad in his chorepiscopal robes. He was waiting for a local train to the Havre de Grace “horse breeding” establishment, and he carried Baxter’s “Saint’s Rest” under one arm and a bookmaker’s blackboard under the other!

Blame my barrister! Emerging from the heat and fury of the election, he advises me formally that I will violate Article 43, Section 101, of the Public General Laws of Maryland if I publish my sure cure for hay fever, and that the penalty for such violationis a fine of not less than $50 and nor more than $200, and imprisonment in jail until is is paid. After paying my barrister’s fee,I haven’t the $50, to say nothing of the $200. What am I to do? Prepare to go to jail. Or will the hay-fever sufferers of Baltimore club together and guarantee my fine?

Meanwhile, I receive an offer of $500 cash from the manager of a local brewery if I admit that his rice beer is my cure. Needless to say, I spurn the temptation. My remedy is not only simple and sure: it is also highly moral. There is nothing in it to violate the principles of the most austere matador of virtue. Even the Hon. William H. Anderson might take it without blushing. It contains neither alcohol nor caffeine, chloral nor hasheesh. It is not habit-forming. It causes no sorrow at the domestic hearth. And finally, it is dirt cheap: the whole course of treatment costs less than 20 cents.

The Hon. Donald R. Hooker, M. D., in the estimable Maryland Suffrage News:

The Suffrage News should have a larger circulation.

Should, must, will and shall! I will never shave again until it is on file in every barber shop in Baltimore. I will never cease to revile the School Board until its fascinating articles upon the perils of vice are read daily to all the classes in the public schools.

The Old Guard refused to surrender, but when the worst came to the worst, it agreed to die. The Hon. William H. Anderson does neither. In today’s Letter Column he is still arguing magnificently that there was no clear issue in Montgomery county, that the overwhelming defeat of the candidates he advocated was no defeat at all for himself. Well, let it go! The game of the Anti-Saloon League, it appears, is of the open-and-shut variety. When men it approves are elected, it scores a triumph, even though those men were not chosen by it and did not publicly submit to its yoke. (For example, in Harford county.) But when men it opposes with the utmost fury and uproar, calling upon all “Christian” men to vote against them and denouncing them as foes to all “moral sentiment” and common decency--when such men walk away with the election, then it suffers no actual defeat! Oh, you Anderson!

The Hon. Herbert N. Casson to the Advertising Club of Baltimore:

I don’t like to see the cities of the North * * * beating out the greatest city of the South, just because you do not advertise, but that is what they are doing. * * * You are not salesmen.

From an open letter to the Philadelphia trade bodies in the North American of September 8:

We find that from June 30 to August 9 of this year 35 tramp steamers were chartered to carry full cargoes of grain from Atlantic and Gulf ports, as follows:

Port No. of Ships Capacity Baltimore 15 3,296,000 bu. Gulf 10 2,032,000 bu. Galveston 4 776,000 bu. Montreal 3 536,000 bu. New York 2 360,000 bu. New Orleans 1 168,000 bu.

Totals 35 7,168,000 bu.

From the Philadelphia North American of the same day:

During the first six months of 1913 Philadelphia shows a loss of 30 per cent. of the import tonnage held in 1912, while Baltimore shows a gain of 50 per cent.

Exports of grain by bushels for three years past, as recorded in the same issue of the same paper:

1910.1911. 1912. Baltimore 13,433,432 19,939,435 33,601,782 Philadelphia 7,819,499 15,620,129 19,327,827

Comparative export grain business of New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia and Boston, from January 1 to August 23 of this year, as given in the North American of today:

Wheat. Corn. Oats. Total. New York 27,772,508. 5,699,416 3,592,059 37,064,953 Baltimore 15,028,002 19,112,776 2,516,508 36,657,286 Boston 13,990,327 3,643,595 772,968 18,406,860 Philadelphia 11,076,000 1,610,000 363,000 13,049,000

My offer to give the Hon. William H. Anderson my space during my absence from the city has brought forth so many protests from the moral element that it is hereby withdrawn. Besides, the hon. gent. himself declines, thus giving a somewhat unexpected exhibition of bashfulness and moral feeling. He seems to realize that it would be highly indecorous for one laboring under charges of misprision of simony to disport himself publicly in a place so long dedicated to defending the most rigid punctilio. However, as I have intimated in the past, I am fully convinced of his essential virtue, and look forward confidently to his confession and repentance. If he tempted the clergy, the clergy first tempted him. Surrounded daily by pluralists who seek to gather in the antagonistic usufructs of clerks in holy orders and ward heelers in active practice, he has naturally suffered a slight tarnishing of his innocence. But a single burst of honest tears will restore him to the purity of the lily.

But who, then, is to burn up my space while I am gone? If I give it to the Hon. Donald R. Hooker. M. D., his fourth-dimensional mathematics and wishbone prophecies will ruin the cause of suffrage in Maryland. If I give it to Sweet Williams, the Christian Science press agent, he will have the Johns Hopkins Hospital in the Sheriff’s hands in a week. And If I give it to the Hon. Max Ways, my old boss, he will suffer a relapse of the newspaper fever, and the Democratic organization will lose its only leader who speaks and writes the English language, and whose neckties match his shirts. In this emergency, I pass up the problem entirely and leave its solution to higher anthorities.

The betting odds in the downtown kaifs, as reported by the Society for the Suppression of Vice:

12 to 1 that the Hon. Eugene Levering won’t let no grant jury stop him. 100 to 1 that the Hon. Charles J. Bonaparte will come back with some hot stuff.