Baltimore Evening Sun (20 October 1913): 6.

Still, it is comforting to reflect that no human being could ever be quite as virtuous as Dr. Goldsborough says he is.

ISAAC AND D’HARRY. They shall rear together like lions: they shall yell as lion’s whelps.–Jeremiah, ii, 38.

From the Blue Law of 1723, re-enacted in 1860 and 1880:

No person whatsoever shall * * * suffer or permit any children or servants to profane the Lord’s day by gaming, fishing, fowling, hunting or unlawful pastime or recreation. * * *

Doesn’t this wise and pious act cover the Sunday hikes of the Wanderlusters? All of the lawyers I have consulted agree that it does. The law, true enough, puts the word “unlawful” in front of “pastimes” and “recreations,” but our courts have uniformly decided that any pastime or recreation is unlawful on Sunday. Thus the police now rigorously suppress such games as baseball, football and lawn tennis, which were unknown when the law was passed, and not long ago, here in Baltimore, a small boy was jailed for profaning the Sabbath by going swimming. And by the acts of 1834, 1847, 1860, 1866, 1874 and 1888 the Legislature gave point to this general prohibition of Sunday recreations by providing special and additional punishments for dancing, billiards, pool, tenpins and duckpins and by forbidding concerts and opera performances. This last prohibition has been extended by a moral Police Board to moving-picture and vaudeville shows without any warrant in law save the general terms of the act.

Certainly it must be plain that Sunday walking is just as licentious and corrupting as Sunday baseball, if not actually more so. It takes hundreds of persons into the green fields and shaded ways at a time when they ought to be safely incarcerated in their homes, meditating upon their sins and wishing that they were in gehenna. It accustoms them to the abhorrent notion that tit is decent to be happy and even merry on Sunday. It seduces them into thinking contumacious thoughts about the great moralists who strive so nobly to save them from their wickedness and to prepare them for the eternal fires. And yet the Lord’s Day Alliance sounds no loud alarrum and whoops no warning whoop. AS in duty bound, it pursues the Sunday baseballist with all the ferocity of a bogus archangel full of caffeine, but it lets the Sunday Wanderluster go his wicked way unchallenged.

What ails our pulpit Barnums and Cagliostros, our Sunday-school wiskinskis? Why do they overlook this safe and tempting bet? No shameless sinner, picking a policeman’s pocket in broad daylight, ever violated the laws of Maryland more boldly than the hiking Sabbath desecrators. What is worse, they flaunt their debauchery through a score of virtuous villages; they leave a trail of temptation and bad example behind them. If Wetheredsville is stunned by the thought of the :murders, robberies and rapines” at Back River, 15 miles away, how must it bo burked and vivisected by the sight of 1,500 voluptuaries in its very door yards! Baltimore is scandalizing Boeotia. Let there be an end to this infamy!

Incidentally, why have our self-consecrated bishops overlooked the poster stuck up around town by the Charcoal Club--that seductive poster with its advertisement of “life” classes, and its full-length portrait of a working girl au naturel? Has the eagle eye of the Hon. Eugene Levering lost its cunning? Will the discoverer of “September Morn” miss this greater and lovelier marvel? The Hon. Anthony Comstock does better in New York. Dost remember the time he raided the Art Students’ Lengue for circulating a precisely similar advertisement--and dragged the office stenographer off to the watchhouse? Is it to be bruited about in moral circles that our village archangels are less alert than dear old Anthony? Where are the policewomen, those gifted ferrets? Up, the Hon. Alfred S. Niles, and at ’em! Go to it, the Hon. John L. Cornell! It is a long time between shows! The common people crave another round of refined clowning.

The estimable Democratic Telegram of this week covers its first page with a large hand-painted photograph of the Hon. Blair Lee, the celebrated political vestal and friend to the plain people. In its literary section it gives the hon. gent. a furious greasing, holds out the olive branch to the Hon. William L. Marbury, roasts the wild oystermen of the Chesapeake littiral and begins a new serial novel, entitled “The Red Button.” Searching with eagle eye I can’t find a single slam at the rascally Sunpaper. For this relief, much thanks!--Adv.

By all means, let us have the city gendarmes trained in athletics, as proposed by the Hon. Morris A. Soper. And when the training begins, let us not overlook the policewomen. Courting couples, under the new dispensation, will grow alert and fleet of foot. If they would keep out of the watchhouse, they must be able to outrun the policewomen. And by the same token, if they are to be landed in the watchhouse, the policewomen must outgallop them. A difficult thing for ladies of generally ample habit, and burdened further with 50 pounds of revolver, espantoon, billy, badge, belt, handcuffs, powder-puff, hand-mirror, smelling salts, lookout, sheets and gum shoes. Let them go into hard training for six months and then show their prowess at the First Constabulary Athletic Meet next spring–say, by chasing an antelope around a mile track.

Not a word from old Archdeacon Wegg about the horse-breeding at Havre de Grace! Can it be that he is against it and afraid to say so–or in favor of it and ashamed to say so?

Lay on, D’Harry, old top! Whoop, dear heart, and bruise the firmament of heaven with your toars! Outyell Isaac, and you get the Police Gazette belt!–Office Adv.

Say what you will against the Hon. Charles J. Bonaparte, anyhow you gotta admit that he is actually better than thou.–Moral Adv.

If the Hon. William H. Anderson is a truly generous slugger, he will print a piece in the American Issue saying something nice about the Rum Demon. The victor should be kind.

Col. Jacobus von Hook’s one remaining ambition is to eat as many banquets as he makes banquet speeches.

From the tagebuch of an immoralist:

Saturday. Three and a half seidels of superb Pilsner. Two cups of coffee. Sunday. Two cups of coffee. One cup of tea.