Baltimore Evening Sun (2 October 1913): 6.

The Hon. Dashing Harry in the hellish Sunpaper of this morning:

Mr. Padgett called on me this evening. It was a personal visit. He is welcome at my home whenever he wishes to call.

Boil your drinking water! Watch Bob come back!

A DAILY THOUGHT. The artist should be free from everything like moral prepossession.--George Gissing.

What has become, by the way, of the committee appointed by the Honorary Pallbearers to investigate the public charities of Baltimore, with particular reference to those that are useless and bogus? This committee carries the weight of the Hon. Henry F. Baker as chairman, but among its members are the Hon. MM. John R. Cary, Hans Froelicher and Eli Frank, and so the public may reasonably expect it to accomplish something. So far, however; no report has come from it, nor has there been any public rumor of its doings.

Baltimore is hideously infested with tin-horn charities, many of which are no more than schemes for personal advertisement, and a sharp and intelligent attack upon them would do a lot of good and save the people a lot of money. There is senseless and unfriendly rivalry in every field, and the efforts of the Federated Charities to prevent waste and pauperization are constantly opposed. I have been trying for several years to find out just how much Baltimore spends for charity every year, but the inquiry is made almost hopeless by the enormous multiplicity of agencies. The actual figures, I believe, would stagger the community. They would probably show a larger expenditure for alms-giving than for public education, and ten times as much as for the public health service.

Meanwhile, there is a distressing shortage of money in quarters where money would do incalculable good. For example, all of the city hospitals are too poor to administer salvarsan to free patients. It costs $3 a dose--and they haven’t the $3. The result is that hundreds of persons with a crippling and highly infectious disease, easily curable by proper treatment, are at large in the communtty. This disease will land many of them in the almshouse or the lunatic anylum, and on the way they will infect hundreds of other persons. The cost to the community, in productive labor lost, is probably well over $3,000,000 a year. The expenditure of $10,000 a year would reduce this loss by fully a half. And yet, in the face of all our sentimental almsgiving, it is impossible to raise the money!

The Hon. Mitchell Levy’s withdrawal of his challenge to the Hon. William H. Anderson, at the behest of his mother, will cause a loud, raucous sigh of relief to issue from the Andersonian trachea. This Hon. Mr. Anderson will have an easy time of it with the Hon. Lloyd Wilkinson next Monday night. Lloyd is a windjammer whose art rests firmly upon mere bellowing, and William will probably penetrate his vitals at the first encounter. The crowd will be lucky, indeed, if the police do not stop the bout. But the Hon. Mr. Levy is a tough and resilient gladiator, and his assault upon the Hon. Mr. Anderson would have been a masterpiece of excoriation. The man knows sorrow; he has been robbed of a kaif license; the blood in his arteries boils. What a pity that his good mother saw fit to forbid the banns! What a slugging- match it would have been!

The horse-breeding experiments being ended at Havre de Grace, and all of the board and feed money being safely banked, Archdeacon Wegg will now proceed to the composition of his long-awaited encyclical, Equitatus mazuma.

From a decision by the Court of Appeals of Georgia:

These arbitrary methods of discovering crime are subversive of the fundamental principles of law; destructive of the indefeasible rights of personal liberty, personal security and personal property, and place at the mercy of every petty official and conscienceless criminal the life, liberty and reputation of the citizen.

Respectfully referred to the moral Police Commissioners of Baltimore city, with the suggestion that they make a note o’t. A grand jury of this town lately gave eloquent testimony to the public view of government by spies and snouters. That is to say, it threw out each and every case that rested on evidence obtained by such persons. What is more, the probabilities are that all subsequent grand juries will pursue the same policy. The “moral wave” is breaking on a rock-bound coast. The people demand a return to orderly and civilized government.

My hay fever cure, published in this place on September 16, seems to have well-nigh stamped iut that dread pestilence in Baltimore. I fled from the city on the day it was made public, fearing the wrath of uncured patients, but on my return Monday morning I found my desk piled high with reports of cures and letters of thanks. What is more, I have several notes of apology from the hunkerous allopaths who denounced me as a quack and threatened me with persecution for practicing medicine without a license. These converts will use my remedy in their practice hereafter. Hay fever is a dead duck in Baltimore. We have met the enemy and he is ours! Eighty-five boxes of cigars, five stickpins, a case of Maryland rye, a gold-plated corkscrew, eight hats, two offers of Chautauqua engagements and the complete works of Henry Van Dyke!

Prepare yourselves, gents, for the liveliest session of the Legislature in a dozen years. Unless all signs fail, the local option bill will hold the centre of the stage and the Hon. William H. Anderson will appear in his old and favorite sword-swallowing act. And there will be the Hon. Cy Cummings armed with a slapstick, and the Hon. Lloyd Wilkinson with a seltzer siphon, and the Hon. Jim Dawkins with a length of curbstone! Juicy, refined sport! Three months of inimitable rough-house, with music by Offenbach! A free show, and a good one!

Once let it be known that Col. Jacobus von Hook will do all of the tax collecting for the greater city and the borough plan will go through with a whoop.--Adv.

The more a body thinks about the Hon. Dan Loden, the more it seems he’s a classy little fellow.--Adv.

The Hon. Wilbur F. Coyle has sold another carboy of his sure cure for baltitude to the Hon. Max Ways. Hope springs eternal in the human breast!

Eager for the advertising, I hereby renew my challenge to the loser of the Anderson-Wilkinson debate.