Baltimore Evening Sun (12 December 1913): 6.

THE FREE LANCE

Wait for the big show at Annapolis! See the spectacular melodrama “Canning the Uplift!” Watch the deacons jump when the electricity is turned on!

A DAILY THOUGHT. God help the rich: the poor can beg!–Capt. Asmus Leonhard.


Connoisseurs of bibbery, that ancient art, will find much interesting and instructive matter in “The Anti-Alcoholic Movement in Europe,” by the Hon. Ernest Gordon, LL. D., a book just from the press. The Hon. Mr. Gordon is an ardent prohibitionist, and so he depicts the ingestion of ethyl alcohol as a proceeding almost as lamentable as cannibalism, but nevertheless he does ample justice to its great professors and virtuosi. In his chapter on the drinking feats of German students, for example, one detects a touch of what is almost a sneaking admiration. And no wonder! Even the most bilious Puritan, even Anderson himself, must confess a veneration for so magnificent and singular a talent. In this bleak land we have no such masterly bibuli, nor any who come near them.


The average American, misled by travelers’ tales, pictures the German as a low schnorrer who lays out 2⅛ cents upon a vahz of dunkel and then proceeds to engulf it drop by drop. He is alleged to sit over one such vahz from noon to dark, while the kaif-keeper’s rent keeps piling up and the very flies are sickened by the smell of stale malt. Perhaps it happens. I don’t know. I have no acquaintance with Germans of that class. But this I do know: that the German of education and good breeding, i. e., the German gentleman, the German professor, the German student–this German, I need not assure you, is no such shameless grafter upon kaif-keepers. He drinks enough to pay the rent, and not only enough, but 40 times as much. Let him but sit down, indeed, with six or eight of his fellows, and there is trade enough to keep a waiter jumping, and profit enough to drape the kaif-keeper with silk and precious stones.


Turn to page 212 of the Hon. Mr. Gordon’s invaluable treatise and you will find an accurate account of a German students’ drinking bout–an account translated from an article by M. Jules Huret in the Paris Figaro. From this it appears that the normal score of an evening’s seance, far from being one half-litre, or two, or three, or half a dozen, is not far from 30, and that all the more talented students greatly exceed it. Says M. Huret:

When the Aschanti [waiter] comes, they [the embattled bibuli] shout “Gulle!” at him. He takes the empty glass, goes and fills it, and brings it back immediately. Instead of using a half hour to drink a quarter-litre, and another sitting over the empty glass, as one is accustomed to do in French kaifs, they roar out, as soon as the half litre is finished, the cry, “Aschanti! Gulle!”

Passing on to more specific feats, M. Huret describes the performance of a veteran student of 36 years--a fellow who had failed in his final examinations nine times running, and was now devoting his entire time to the saufkunst. Says the fascinated Frenchman:

He seized the handle of his glass with his entire hand, raised his elbow to the height of his chin, opened his mouth, and shot--there is no other word for it--the contents of the glass down his throat, without touching the lips. He drank without swallowing, without even tasting the beer. * * * I broke out enthusiastically over this talent. * * *

And why not? How many Frenchmen in all France could have done it? The spectacle was a subtle commentary upon Sedan, and what is more, a threat of future Sedans. One imagines that amazed Gaul slinking from the bier-abbatoir upon velvety and trembling toes, still taking the first D-express back to one-bottle Paree. Such exploits help to give point and plausibility to “The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century,” by Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Wagner’s son-in-law. Teutolatry is easy to one who has seen the men of that great race at their stupendous leaps and grapplings in the ethylic arena.

But it is on special and ceremonial occasions that the gifts of the German student are best displayed. For example, at times of student mourning--say, when a revered professor or fellow-student has passed away. On such days, says the Hon. Mr. Gordon, quoting Prof. Dr. M. Hirschfeld, author of “Die Gurgel von Berlin,” the deceased is honored with a royal salute of 101 seidels! That is to say, each member of the funeral party drinks so many in memory of him--and between daylight and noon!

The ceremony takes place in the favorite drinking room of the departed, and his private seidel is draped with crepe, filled with Münchener, and placed at the head of the table, to the right of the president. Three songs are sung, “Es Hatten drei Gesellen ein fein Kollegium,” “Integer Vitae” and “Vom hoh’n Olymp herab,” and a short eulogy is pronounced. Then the lights are extinguished, there is a Salamander (i. e., a ceremonial clinking of glasses), and the seidel of the deceased is smashed with a bung-starter. Thereupon the drinking of the royal salute begins.

I commend the Hon. Mr. Gordon’s book to all persons interested in the booze arts. The prohibitionist will find it a mine of argument and statistics, and the anti-prohibitionist will be charmed by its heroic anecdotes. It is a volume that deserves a place in every library.

An elegant daguerreotype of the Hon. Jesse D. Price, the Eastern Shore Andersonicide, adorns the first page of this week’s Democratic Telegram, and on page 4 there is a sympathetic article on his public career. On the following page the editor of the Telegram, the Hon. George Arnold Frick, titters audibly at the Hon. Mr. Anderson’s obsequies. I search the paper diligently without finding a single fling at the Sunpaper. Can it be that the Sunpaper is forgiven–or that the Hon. D. Harry has lost something of the old heat and passion of his grastyphobia? One hopes not. Harry quiescent is a sad shadow of Harry in eruption.–Adv.

The Bangor correspondent of the New York World on the recent effort to enforce the prohibition laws in Maine:

The rum hunt, considered financially, has never been a paying business for the State. A great deal of money is collected in fines, and at present the fines in Bangor outrun the costs of law enforcement, but in the long run, prohibition is a very expensive thing for Maine. It perpetuates political wars, occupies much of the time of the courts, requires a small army of officials such as sheriffs and deputies, foments endless and bitter controversies and seriously affects all business. Maine has had prohibition for 60 years, and in that time the population has increased only about 160,000, or from 584,000 in 1850 to 740,000 in 1910, less than 2,700 a year.