Baltimore Evening Sun (1 January 1914): 6.

Portrait of Mlle. September Morn putting on her stockings after being chased out of Spring Gardens by the moral bloodhounds of the Pentz Society:

{illustration}

Whence this licentious picture? Was it devised with a pen by the Hon. Tom Bee? Or did I clip it from the Police Gazette? Or from the Nation? Or from Simplicissimus? Nay! It came from the current (December 27) number of the estimable American Issue, Maryland Edition, of which the Hon. William H. Anderson was editor until midnight last night. Imagine such salacious lithographs in a great moral journal! What will the Hon. Eugene Levering say when he sees it? The Hon. John Lawrence Cornell? The Rev. Dr. Kenneth G. Murray?*

Incidentally, this singularly suggestive wood-cut is used to advertise Old Prof. Robinson’s Thermal Bath, a sure cure for “kidney trouble, nervous prostration and all skin diseases.” Will it cure chronic nephritis? Diabetes? Eczema? If so, the learned chirurgeons of the Johns Hopkins still have something to learn. And when Prof. Robinson says “all skin diseases” does he include dandruff, epithelioma and leprosy? Here he is a bit vague, but regarding rheumatism, he is specific and certain. To quote:

In cases of rheumatism the uric acid poison is extracted from the system through the pores, almosdt as liquids are sucked up through a straw.

In brief, this Professor Robinson is a quack, as much so as Dr. Munyon, Prof. Lydia Pinkham or any other of the rump faculty advertising in the Sunpaper. It is instructive to see such a gifted super-Osler getting space next to reading matter in the American Issue, “an advocate of Christian patriotism.” One stands enchanted before the brand of Christian patriotism that the American Issue advocates.

Sad finish of the old-time holiday merry-making in Baltimore, as described by this morning’s Towel:

It was a very tame carnival. * * * Those who selected Baltimore street as the thoroughfare on which to celebrate found that policemen were lined up everywhere. * * * The majority contented themselves with walking up and down the street, blowing weakly at small horns and at not very frequent intervals. * * * Ticklers were under the ban, as was confetti. Nor were the frolickers allowed to mask their faces or to wear too gaudy costumes. * * *

Such is the New Puritanism in action. The citizen is practically under arrest from the moment he ventures to be merry. The police determine and delimit his every act. They even decide what sort of costume he shall wear, and bustle him to the watch-house if he goes beyond their standard of sober gayety. And sharp-nosed policewomen circulate through the crowd, hot upon the trail of every rascally young “white slave trader” who dares to chuck a flapper under the chin. Such is the New Morality, bilious, suspicious, evil-minded. Such is the sublime effect of turning policemen into snouters and old maids.

But the spirit of youth, of course, is not to be stayed by each imbecile rules and precautions. While all the cops were down town last night, eagerly alert for “too gaudy” costumes, the residence sections were being joyfully shot up. It is years, I dare say, since another such infernal din was ever heard in this town. Pistols were fired in the air without the slightest effort at concealment; in the vicinity of my own house the racket was ear-splitting, and it kept up for more than an hour. There were occasional shots, indeed, so late as 1.45 A. M. And the ringing of cow bells, the blowing of horns and the loud, boozy bellowing of merrymakers accompanied them.

Which is the safer, the decenter, the better—a carnival down town, where no one is annoyed by it and the police may keep it within bounds, or such a roaring hullabaloo as we had last night? Which offers the lesser menace to the public safety? Which offers the greajer enjoyment to those who take part in it?

The new Income Tax law, which went into effect last night at midnight (at which time, I make no doubt, most of its victims were superbly in liquor, and hence anæsthetic to its slings), penalizes bachelors in the sum of $10 a year. As well seek to punish murderers by paddling them with barrel-staves! The average bachelor regards $10 with the same contempt that a married man lavishes upon his mother-in-law. To pay such a miserable fee for his freedom is beneath his dignity; to impose it upon him is to insult him. All the bachelors I know (and of those resident in Baltimore I know all that are worth knowing and many that are not) are in favor of a straight tax of $1 a day, payable daily, and not a few of them are determined to pay it, law or no law.

But how? I have heard many plans discussed, but all of them save one run aground upon the fact that the Treasurer of the United States is forbidden to accept any payments or money not provided for by law. That one plan is divided into two branches. On the one hand, it proposes the voluntary payment of a dollar a day into the Treasury conscience fund, where the money may accumulate until Congress gives authority ror its use. And on the other hand, it proposes the destruction of a dollar bill every day, preferably by fire. The $1 silver certificates in circulation are mere promises to pay, and the destruction of one of them means that the Government’s obligations are diminished to the extent of $1. Whether or not such destruction is lawful, I do not know, for the barristers I have consulted are of varying opinions, but at all events it is honest and patriotic. And so a patriot may advocate it academically, while postponing the actual act until the juriconsults give the word.

A DAILY THOUGHT. It is to be remarked that a great many people are born curiously unfitted for the fate awaiting them on earth.--Joseph Conrad.

The boomers! The boomers! B’gosh, they’re at it still! A-pushing of their snowball up a long and red-hot hill!

By the way, what has become of the good doctor? Three or four months ago he was bombarding the newspapers with threats and proclamations in high, astounding terms, but of late he has been strangely silent. Can it be that the vice crusade has busted?