Baltimore Evening Sun (22 October 1913): 6.

Drawing on the poster that the Charcoal Club is sticking up in all the shop windows:

{illustration}

The barrel, of course, does not appear in the original drawing. I have aded it in order to keep out of the clutches of the Hon. Berney Lee. But the Charcoal Club boldly dispenses with barrels, and not only with barrels, but also with kimonos, slit skirts, petticoats and fig leaves. Where is the Society for the Suppression of Vice, that camorra of archangels? What holds the Hon. John L. Cornell, that grand young man? Who has tied up the Hon. Eugene Levering? The common people crave a rough-house, a melodrama, an auto da fe. Let the band begin to play, and the villains to villainize, and the heroes to pursue them with artillery, and the clowns to go leaping through the hoops! There hasn’t been a first-class moral burlesque show i Baltimore since the grand jury caught the Hon. Charles J. Bonaparte with the goods.

THE PERFECT WIFE. Suspect me no more, asperse me no more, provoke me no more. Do not any longer contend for the mastery, be content to be a private, insignificant person, known and loved by God and me.–John Wesley to his wife.

The Hon. John A. Hennessy, confidential adviser to the ex-Hon. Martyr Sulzer, on his late chief:

Let us be under no delusions about Sulzer. When he went to Albany he made appointments that he knew were dictated from Delmonico’s [i. e., by Murphy]. He took his orders from Murphy. * * * He was glad to take them until he foudn that it was a case of 1 per cent. for the public and 99 per cent. for Murphy. It was only then, let Sulzer say what he pleases, that his conscience came to him–that his friends came to him and asked him if he would be true to his oath of office.

This Mr. Hennessey, let it be clearly undestood, is still a friend to Sulzer, and the speech from which I have quoted was an argument in favor of Sulzer. And yet, being an honest man, he had to admit that Sulzer’s melodramatic rebellion against Murphy was delayed, insincere and inspired from without. And in admitting it, he had to warn his hearers frankly to be “under no delusions about Sulzer.”

The truth is, of course, that Sulzer is not and never has been a man of independence and courage. He was led into his rebellion, not by any virtuous inner urging, but by the insistent entreaties of his friends and the hammering of the independent newspapers. A thorough-going posturer and strutter, he has always shown that extreme sensitiveness to newspaper criticism which you will find in all such comedians–for example, in the Hon. Dashing Harry. Had the newspapers let him alone he would have gone on taking orders from Murphy–and posing before the people as a great moral leader. As it was, he was forced into the forefront of a fray for which he had no taste and no talent, and the first shot from the enemy penetrated his flimsy armor.

The downfall of Sulzer was an impressive object lesson to the American people. His eager adoption by the so-called Progressive party is another. The sooner all the mountebanks who now woo and enchant the people are unmasked, kicked out of office and collected into one definite group of quacks and soreheads, the better it will be for civilization in this country. We are getting our fill of government by political Munyons and Paracelsuses. Let us hasten the day when government by prudent and honest men shall be restored.

Headline from the estimable Hot Towel of August 9 last:

SUGAR REFINERY SEEMS ASSURED ---- new york and local capitalists interested ---- NEAR FOOT OF LIGHT STREET ---- New Industry Will be Capitalized at $5,000,000–Utmost Secrecy, Maintained by Those Interested in the Proposition–New York Financer Owns Much Stock– Will Wait Until Congress Ad- journs.

Comment of the anonymous cynic who sends it in:

This sugar refinery announcement is what the florists call a hardy annual, or, more accurately, a constant bloomer. It reminds me of the perennial claim, so often made by the Honorary Pallbearers, that 37 lines of steamships run from Baltimore to foreign ports. Any ship broker in Gay street or any stevedore on the docks will tell you that the actual number is 7 or 8. To get it up to 37 it is necessary to add the lines running to such foreign ports as Solomons Island, Rock Creek, Tolchester Beach and Port Deposit.

Bitter words by a man full of bile. As for me, I prefer to believe in this grandiose sugar refinery. It is a pleasant thing to think of; it does us no harm to read about it occasionally. Idealism is the salvation of man. Life would be unbearable if it wree all harsh reality.

Eugenics: the theory that charm in a woman is the same as charm in a prize fighter.

Boil your drinking water! Watch D’Harry outbellow Isaac! Observe the return of Paving Bob!