Baltimore Evening Sun (11 October 1913): 6.

From the report of the Hon. John L. Cornell to the directors of the Society for the Suppression of Vice:

Believing that we have done much good for the city, the suggestion is made that we continue our work along the same lines with renewed vigor.

In other words. Young Mr. Cornell formally approves himself, and urges that his wages go on. The same lofty, judicial attitude is assumed by the Rev. W. W. Davis, D. D., chief scout and wiskinski of the Lord’s Day Alliance. But what do the men who put up the money think? Do the contributors to the Society for the Suppression of Vice feel that their dollars have been well and wisely spent? Are they still eager to pay for the stupid blundering of the Hon. Charles J. Bonaparte, LL. D., and the Hon. Eugene Levering, those grotesque yankers of the devil’s tail? Are they still easy marks? Or has the report of the late grand jury made them see the light?

DASHING HARRY. He foameth, and gnasheth with his teeth, and pineth away.--Matthew, ix, 18.My contention that the great majority of anti-vivisectionists are deliberate and habitual liars is given fresh support in today’s Letter Column. There you will find an anonymous member of the fraternity engaged in the favorite anti-vivisectionist sport of quoting from a scientific document, and indulging in the favorite anti-vivisectionist privilege of editing it to suit his case. I allude to his quotation from the Final Report of the Royal Commission on Vivisection (London, 1912), as follows:

Certain results, claimed from time to time to have been proved by experimentation on living animals and alleged to have been beneficial in preventing or curing disease, have, on further investigation and experiments, been found to be fallacious or useless.

Here are two deliberate attempts to deceive. In the first place this brave liar changes the word “experience” in the original into “experiments,” thus seeking to make it appear vivisectionists are at war with one another–an old anti-vivisectionist trick. And in the second place, he prints a qualification without printing the main statement. That is to say, he seeks. to make it appear that the Royal Commission reported against vivisection, whereas the truth is that it reported in favor of vivisection and in straightforward, unequovical terms. I quote the paragraphs immediately following the one so carefully dissected out of its context by our mendacious anti-vivisectionist:

That, notwithstanding such failures, valuable knowledge has been acquired in regard to physiological processes and the causation of disease, and that useful methods for the prevention, cure and treatment of certain diseases have resulted from experimental investigations upon living animals. That, as far as we can judge, it is highly improbable that, without experiments made on animals, mankind would at the present time have been in possession of such knowledge. That, in so far as disease has been successfully prevented or its morbidity reduced, suffering has been diminished in man and in lower animals. That there is ground for believing that similar methods of investigation, if pursued in the future, will be attended with similar results. (Page 47.)

The evidence before the commission showed that, of the new remedial agents brought forward during the last 40 years, all save one--to wit, pilocarpin--have been “introduced as a result of animal experimentation.” During these 40 years the general death rate in Europe and America has been reduced by more than 35 per cent., and the average span of human life has been lengthened by fully seven years. And yet these lyIng anti-vivisectionists continue to decry and defame the great and good men who have brought that improvement to pass. And yet these slimy wretches continue their campaign of “editing” and false pretenses.

The Evening Sun office is infested these days by the press agents of various bare-legged dancers, which fact gives promise of good sport for the “moral element” during the next six or eight weeks. Nothing is more delightful to a malignant moralist than a chance to flay a public dancer. He may go as far as he likes: the dancer never objects. On the contrary, her takings fatten in direct ratio to the bitterness of the preliminary excoriation. The tests for the improper is universal. It is always easy to drum up a crowd by promising something racy.

The press agents all know it, and most of them are not modest about turning the fact to profit. Everyone remembers, I daresay, the sensational attack upon Mlle. Gaby Deslys last winter. Well, that attack was deliberately provoked and fostered by a highly skillful press agent. The first letters to the newspapers, protesting against the appearance of Mlle. Gaby, were written by this gentleman and sent to the papers over assumed names. The “moral element” fell for the trick, and during the two weeks before Gaby’s appearance, the public was deafened with objections to her. The result was that a huge mob fought for places on her opening night, and she played to $9,000 in Baltimore in three days.

That opening night was made gay by many grotesque incidents. The moral Police Board, bent upon protecting the assembled cognoscienti against “suggestive” stuff, sent the Marshal, the Deputy Marshal and a whole squad of cops to the theatre. But, alas, there was not a “suggestive” line in the whole performance, nor did Gaby expose any of her anatomy. Instead, she sang a few harmless sonhs and did a few harmless dances–and great was the wailing among the cognoscienti! A number of old gentlemen had turned out of sick-beds to be present. One was carried into the theatre by two friends. And all for naught!

But the press agent was equal to the situation. He knew that the crowd’s disappointment would mean a poor house on the second night, so he sent whisperers into the lobby between the acts with news that the genuinely incandescent stuff would be pulled on the morrow. The police, it was hinted, would not come back. The big show was yet to come. So many of the folks who suffered bafflement on Monday night came back with fresh hopes on Tuesday night. An amusing comedy. A delightful burlesque.

Daily record of my potations, for the information of the Hon. William H. Anderson and the boozehounds:

Thursday. Two cups of coffee. One bottle of light beer.* Friday. One cup of coffee.

This bottle of beer was bought in “dry” Georgia by a reader of The Evening Sun and sent to me for analysis. It was sold as near-beer. On putting it to the uvular test I found that it was the genuine stuff, and so I let it slip along.