Baltimore Evening Sun (5 December 1913): 6.

The sagacious Dr. Goldsborough after a visit to the Penitentiary:

Warden Leonard seems to be doing his best to make the institution serviceable * * * He seems to have his heart in his work, and to be giving the best energy in him to it.

This, remember, after visiting the Penitentiary. Before going there to see for himself the intellectual doctor inclined an eager ear to every bogus “expert” who slandered the Hon. Mr. Leonard, and was full of pious plans for bouncing him out of his job--and some needy Eastern Shore Republican into it.

A DAILY THOUGHT. The object of the theatre is to teach us, not what this or that particular person has done, but what every person under certain circumstances would do.--Lessing.

The estimable Sunpaper’s decision to “close” its alleged “list of subscriptions” to the Sunpaper-super-Mahon Christmas tree fund somehow recalls the speech of that Georgia Moor who, on mounting the scaffold to be hanged, said: “Gen’lem’n, dishyer cert’ny will be a lesson to me.” That “list of subscriptions,” in point of fact, has never had much material existence. It is made up, not of voluntary and spontaneous offerings, but of sums wrung out of susceptible persons by the most shameless dunning and squeezing. A few subscriptions, true enough, came forth without direct solitcitation--but how few, indeed! The majority of subscribers were specifically besought to subscribe, and not many of them would have subscribed otherwise.

The whole episode presents a reductio ad absurdum of vociferous sentimentalizing by newspapers. In times of public calamity, when it is desired to raise funds quickly for the relief of the sufferng, it is convenient and proper for newspapers to do the collecting, and the public usually shows its understanding of that fact by responding liberally. And at other times no less, when some legitimate charity needs assistance, it has come to be the custom for the newspapers to offer their aid, and for the promoters of such charities to accept that aid.

But it is one thing to give assistance to honest and useful charities, and quite another thing to pump gas into preposterous burlesques on charity. It is this last that the newspapers of Baltimore, and particularly the Sunpaper, have been doing, and in excess, in late years. They have filled their columns with appeals to such blubbering sentimentality as resides in the chests of childish women and drunken men; they have made sinister bargains with notorious mountebanks, swapping free publicity for support and approval; they have interfered seriously with the work of the legitimate charities, diverting money from them and producing doubt and confusion in the public mind.

The Christmas tree fund was and is an affecting climax to the series. Proposed in good faith by the Rev. Dr. C. D. Harris, it quickly became a bone of contention between the Sunpaper and the Hon. Dashing Harry. Fearing the scandal of seeming to row over a Christmas treat, the Sunpaper plunged headlong into the far worse scandal of helping a political charlatan to make that treat a means to his own cheap and disgusting glorification. The public view of these amazing proceedings is now plain; not 10 per cent. of the money which goes to pay for the travesty will bo money spontaneously offered hy citizens who hope for no profit from it.

According to the current American Issue the Fifteenth International Anti-Alcohol Congress, in 1915, will likely be held at Atlantic City. Which suggests the suggestion, as it were, that the next International Purity Congress be held at Paris, and the next general synod of the Lord’s Day Alliance at Back River.

Old Doc Levister, the Anti-Saloon League pathologist, makes the announcement in today’s Letter Column that 500 Baltimoreans succumb each year to “the exercise of personal liberty in the consumption of alcoholic beverages.” When performing upon the cornet, why blow so softly? During the late campaign, if I remember rightly, the mortality from rum was placed at higher than this, and yet no one complained. Do you recall the flaming cards in the street cars, solemnly warning the men of Baltimore that one-fifth of them were destined to die of drink? Well, one-fifth of the 5,552 who died last year works out to be 1,110–which is more than double the 500 of dear old Levister. What is the meaning of the new modesty? When dealing in balderdash, why bother about realism?

Headline from the estimable Evening Sunpaper:

45 LETTERS ON A PIN HEAD

More honorary degrees?

The Hon. William H. Anderson in the current American Issue:

The Free Lance himself has been used and will undoubtedly be further used by this Higher Power which he ridicules.

In brief, I am accused of “ridiculing” the Creator Himself because I wag my outstretched fingers at the Hon. Mr. Anderson’s preposterous claim to divine inspiration! Laugh at Anderson, and you laugh at the very Hosts of Heaven!

Could anything better display the ludicrous bumptiousness of these charlatan cherubim? First, the Hon. Young Cochran, mistaking a bar’l for brains, elects himself pope of Maryland and proceeds to excommunicate everyone who does not subscribe instanter to his infantile and ignorant maunderings. Then the Hon. Charles J. Bonaparte, LL. D., makes abominable charges against all persons, including even eminent clergymen of his own faith, who venture to dissent from his puerile “thoughts” on the subject of the social evil. And finally, the Hon. Mr. Anderson lays down the doctrine (a) that he is the special agent and confidante of the Almighty, and (b) that any man who disputes his claim “ridicules” the Almighty Himself.

What next, ye gods and little fishes, what next? Is there to be no end to the loutish rampaging and posturing of charlatans? Have things come to such a pass that no man can be a Christian who does not take his theory from the hornbook of the Hon. Mr. Cochran--that no man can be decent who does not take his ethics ready made from the junkshops of the Hon. MM. Bonaparte and Anderson? Certainly, I can’t believe it. What is. more, I can’t believe that Anderson believes it. For the intellectual attainments of the Hon. MM. Cochran and Bonaparte, my admiration, alas! is very modest, but I am thoroughly convinced that the Hon. Mr. Anderson is a man of normal sense. Could any man of normal sense actually believe the bosh that he feeds to his deacons?