Baltimore Evening Sun (8 December 1913): 6.

Sinister remark of the Hon. Aristides Sophocles Goldsborough in the Municipal Journal:

If the public demands the suppression of highwaymen, public opinion should likewise keep an eye on the [municipal] government.

Come, Aristides, explain yourself! What do you know that you are concealing?

The New York American on Mayor-elect John Purroy Mitchel’s plans for the Police Department:

The persons who have been in touch with the Mayor-elect are of the opinion that [the Hon.] Arthur E. Woods stands the best chace of being named to succeed Commissioner Waldo * * * Mr. Woods favors a 10-year term for the Commissioner and believes the segregation of vice would be a step toward its control and the elimination of graft in the department.

Another horrendous rogue! Another immoral scorner of the “experts” and archangels, the Prof. Dr. Graham Taylors and Judge Harry Olsens, the Dr. Winfield Scott Halls and Hon. Charles J. Bonapartes! Another capper for bawdy houses!

A DAILY THOUGHT. Everyone may seek his own happiness in the way that seems good to himself, provided that he infringe not the freedom of others to strive after a similar end.–Immanuel Kant.

My snouters bring me news that the Rev. Dr. W. W. Davis, wiskinski of the Lord’s Day Alliance, introduced my name into one of his discourses at last week’s sinner-bake of his estimable society, his object being, it appears, to prove to the assembled cherubim that he regards me with affection, though perhaps not with approval. I return the compliment with interest. The rev. doctor is one of the most genial, industrious and rambunctious of ecclesiastics, and I esteem him sufficiently to lament his dedication to so dubious a cause. Nothing, indeed, would give me more joy than to see him haul up, break down and promise to squeeze the docile tear no more.

But let me warn Dr. Davis, in all friendship, that the forgiveness of sinners is not a business that pays. The wealthy old sports who support the uplift in this town do not care for soft music and the fraternal kiss. What they want is roughhouse—and their money will always go to the sinhound who provides it. That explains the great strength of the Hon. William H. Anderson, and it explains, too, the relatlve feebleness of such men an Capt. John Logan. Anderson has never moved a single sinner in his whole life, whereas Logan has given a helping hand to scores. But Anderson has burnt thousands at his moral stakes and then heaved their carcasses into gehenna, whereas Logan is so tender-hearted that he even refuses to chase a poor prostitute down an alley. Result: Anderson is hip-deep in money—and Logan is darn near busted.

No; it will do Dr. Davis no good to sob upon the shoulders of sinners. The good doctor, indeed, has already had personal experience of it. When he announced the program of his late general synod he discreetly applied the denomination of “clinics” to certain of his meetings, obviously hep to the fact that the deacons like to hear the unregenerate yell. And I myself, seeking to help a friend, printed a notice hinting at sanguinary sport. But at the very first of these “clinics” the rev. gent committed the hideous fawks pass of informing the assembled puritani that no butchery would really take place. With what result? With the result, alas, that not a single deacon came to the next “clinic!”

Fact! That next “clinic” was held at 10 A. M. Friday in the Church of the Messiah, at Fayette and Gay streets, the demonstrating spiritual surgeon being Prof. Dr. T. T. Mutchler, of Pennsylvania. When Dr. Mutchler came into the operating room but one person was present—and that person was an immoral journalist, a fellow who smokes cigarettes, frequents the theatres and shoots dice for turkeys! Not even the rector of the church was there! Not even Dr. Davis himself was there! At 10.10 the Hon. Joshua Levering wandered in and took the chair—and Dr. Mutchler went on with his “clinic” before Mr. Levering and the aforesaid unrighteous reporter.

Seriously speaking, my hopes hop high that Dr. Davis will be convinced, by the evidence. of his own meetings, that no demand for a further glooming of the Sabbath exists in Baltimore. If he insists that his week of exhorting was a success, then I bow to his judgment, but I do not think that he will so insist. He had pitifully small crowds and they were far from representative or influential. His star performer among the laymen was the Hon. Dashing Harry—a fact sufficiently eloquent to go without elucidation. And of the clergymen who spoke for him, perhaps the most conspicuous of them—to wit, the Rev. Dr. Hugh Birckhead, of Emmanuel—actually delivered an able argument against him.

Certainly it must be plain to Dr. Davis, after this lesson, that the people of Baltimore do not take kindly to the present jehad of the Lord’s Day Alliance. I therefore call upon him, with the best of faith and good-will, to put away his vain dreams and come down to earth. The people of Baltimore are not the loose-lived rogues he tries to make them out, but decent and self- respecting folk, and they see no harm in quiet recreation on Sunday. They would be the better if they could have concerts in winter and baseball in summer. Such cleanly diversions would keep them away from the fishing shores and make better citizens and better Christians of them. I am sincerely convinced that the efforts to restrict their reasonable recreations is an effort against their happiness and their well-being, and what is more, I believe that Dr. Davis himself, deep down in his heart, is of the same opinion.

Will he admit it? Will he revise his program so that it differentiates intelligently and clearly between what is really vicious and what is fundamentally healthy and decent? I am optimist enough to believe that he will, once he has thought the thing over. And as an aid to that change of tactics I hereby promise him something that he now lacks: the support of a large body of influential clergymen of all faiths. Will he give up the Mutchlers and the Leverings, and their donkeyish plans for prohibiting even excursions on Sunday? Will he see the light that shines so brightly?

That brave but anonymous devil who dedicates himself to my extinction performs again in today’s Letter Column. Ah, the lofty souls of some of these moral gladiators! Ah, the knightly gifts of one who calls names from behind a bale of hay!