Baltimore Evening Sun (18 October 1913): 6.

From a report of an interview with the Hon. Andrew Carnegie, LL. D.:

Q.–Do you still take your thimbleful of Scotch whisky every day? A.–Of course I do. * * * The Kaiser and I have been ordered to take a half glass of extra fine Scotch with our meals. It’s the doctor’s order.

Poor Andy! He is not hep to the pathological effects of alcohol. He doesn’t know that it turns the arteries into aclcium silicate, converts the heart into a sponge and hob-nails the liver like a mountaineer’s boot. A defiant old sinner at 78, he is unaware that he died of acute miliary dipsomania at 52.

THE HON. D’HARRY. And the land was desolate, and the fullness thereof, by the noise of his roaring.–Ezekiel, xix, 7.

How long will the Wanderlust movement last? So long, perhaps, as the Hon. Henry Edward Warner plies his gigantic press agent’s pulmotor. So long as the Sunday pilgrimage retains the hot passions of a walking match, a mere contest of endurance, an exhausting and senseless race against time. But not much longer. In a few short weeks the band of pilgrims will be reduced to a few hundreds, and then to a handful, and then to half a dozen incurable enthusiasts. Americans seem to have little liking for walking in the country. Most of them, indeed, seem to have little liking for the country itself. They are not nature-lovers, as the Germans are. The smell of the woods does not wet them with joy. They are not thrilled by the music of birds.

Go to the folk-songs of a people to look into their souls. The songs of the American drip with his characteristic sentimentality: they are full of a mushy and clownish amorousness, of windy patriotism, of home and mother. But no word about the trees and flowers, the hills and valleys, is in them. There is no American equivalent for “Im Wald und auf der Heide,” nor for “Goldene Abend Sonne”–songs that every German schoolboy knows. The procession of the seasons does not stir the Yankee to melody. He has no spring songs–no “Aus threm Schlaf arwatchet.” He has no “Winter, ad’e!” no “Wie herrlich ist’s im Wald.” Above all, he has no songs of the true wanderer–no “Auf, Brüder, auf!” no

Mit hundert tausend Stimmen ____, Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah! __ in die frische, (__________) Hurrah, hurrah, hurrah!

Such love of nature as the American holds is chiefly a childish delight in mere vastness and grotesquerie. He fences off and admires such staggering geological deliriums as the Yellowstone National Park and the Grand Canyon of the Colorado, and he makes pious pilgrimages to Luray and Niagara. But the quieter, lovelier beauty nearer home seems to escape him. Here in Baltimore, for example, it is a rare thing to hear anyone speak of the valley above Relay; and yet that valley is almost as charming as the valley of the Neckar, and if it were in Germany it would be full of resthouses and legends, and every schones aussicht would be placarded, kaifed and celebrated in song. I have walked it three or four times a year for 20 years, and yet I do not remember meeting more than half a dozen other pilgrims. It is accessible, an easy walk, and beautiful at all seasons, but it remains wholly deserted. Between Relay and Ellicott City there is not a single inn, not a place to sit down, not a human invitation to visitors.

If you want to see just how little Americans love nature, go into Druid Hill Park on a summer Sunday afternoon. Along the paved walks and in the trampled groves south of the Mansion House, you will find probably 10,000 persons, but in the lovely woods to the northward you will wander almost alone. Here and there you will see a courting couple shadowed by a park policeman, and here and there a family party, but most of the woodland paths will be deserted. That northern half is by far the more attractive part of Druid Hill, and what is more, it is but 10 minutes’ walk from the Park Heights avenue cars. But Baltimoreans seem to prefer the sections which remind them of River View.

Wherefore and by reason of which I offer gloomy prophecies as to the nature of the Wanderlust movement. It is a craze of the moment, resting upon no genuine inclination. A few enthusiasts will keep on, but the vast majority will tire of the sport as soon as it ceases to be a novelty. Incidentally, it is amazing that no organized opposition to it has yet appeared. What ails the pious Lord’s Day Alliance? Where are the clerical mountebanks who snap so eagerly at every chance to break into the newspapers? Certainly, the folk who go walking on Sunday afternoons are headed straight for damnation, if not actually for jail. Doesn’t the Blue Law of 1723 prohibit any form of “pastime or recreation” on the Sabbath? And isn’t walking both the one thing and the other? Besides, who is sure that all of the young couples in line are married? Have they licenses to walk hand in hand? Where are the policewomen? Where are the scorpions of sin? Let us have an end of this debauchery!

ADVICE TO SNOUTERS. But let none of you suffer as a murderer, or as a thief, or as an evildoer, or as a busybody in other men’s affairs.--1 Peter, iv, 15.

Anti-vivisectionist: One who would rather weep over a dead tomcat than relieve the ills of a dying child.

From the learned and accurate New York Morning Telegraph:

In Redondo Beach, Cal., the votes of the women kept the town from going dry.

Forward the suffrage! It will come in Maryland just in time to save us from the boozehounds!

From a death notice in the estimable Evening Sunpaper:

He died yesterday afternoon at 3 o’clock from a stroke of apoplexy he sustained this morning.

The Hon. D’Harry will be loose again next week. And the poor old Sunpaper will be murdered six times more.--Advance Notice.

Boil your drinking water! Send in your subscription to the Anderson dinner! Watch Bob come back!

Extract from the logbook of a mariner upon the Ethylic Ocean:

Friday. Two cups of coffee.

There is the Letter Column, but where is Chorepiscopus Wegg? What does he think of the Havre de Grace horse-breeding now–with the board bills all paid, and the deacons all hot for the Ten Commandments again?