Baltimore Evening Sun (10 January 1914): 6.

Moral conditions in Salisbury, as described by the Hon. F. Leonard Wailes, president of the Law and Order League:

Right here on Main street, where your wives and daughters pass every day, we have discovered a house of ill-fame, the women plying their trade openly. * * * We have the illicit sale of liquor, we have gambling dens and we have disorderly houses.

Testimony of other local witnesses, as reported by the estimable Towel:

The Rev. Dr. Cyrus P. Keen, Eastern Shore superintendent of the Anti-Saloon League * * * declared that it is common knowledge that liquor is being shipped into Wicomico county.

Prominent speakers declared that disorderly houses were run apparently without fear of interruption, that street-walkers accosted people openly on the main street, and that gambling houses were in full blast.

Testimony of State’s Attorney Bell, as reported by the same accurate gazette:

He said that there have been disorderly houses and street-walkers in Salisbury ever since he was five years old. * * * Salisbury, he said, is the cleanest city today on the Eastern Shore.

Well, well, do not laugh! The joke is on us, not on the Eastern Shore. It is on the theory that we ourselves are too moral to run our own city, and that we need the help of the moral Eastern Shoremen, that the Sunpaper and the other moralists protest against Home Rule. Even supposing the Hon. Frank Kelly in control of the Police Department, is it likely that we should have brothels on Baltimore street? If so, why were they not there when the Hon. Mr. Kelly was in control? Finally, ask yourself whether it is true, after all, that all sin resides in the city and all virtue in the country. In particular, ponder upon the testimony of State’s Attorney Bell.

The Hon. D. Bachrach in today’s Letter Column:

I have * * * not replied to the gibes and buffoonery of the Pilsner Mencken. * * *

The same gentleman in the Letter Column of last Tuesday:

The Rev. Dr. Mencken has made a just criticism of my remarks. * * *

Unfrocked, b’gosh! And hanged after being declared not guilty!

My old friend Doc Tintoff, secretary and head scout of the American College of Mechano-Therapy, at 81 West Randolph street, Chicago, Ill., is once more pursuing me with his soft, sweet blandishments. The whole science of mechano-therapy, which the doctors hate because it is ruining their graft, is now almost as cheap as an ordinary phonograph. Doc Tinthoff, in fact, offers to teach it to me for $25 cash, or $27 on the installment plan, and what is more, he offers to send me his “Copyrighted Lessons Nos. 1 and 2,” his “magnificent complete set of eight grouped lithographed anatomical and physiological charts, 22½. by 6, 30½ inches in size, beautifully lithographed in colors,” and his “special chart, 19 by 32 inches in size, showing illustrations of a number of the principal mechano-therapeutic manipulations”—all entirely free of cost. This in the way of bait. If the lessons and charts inflame me, I begin paying the Doc $3 a month. If they fail to inflame me, I send them back.

Mechano-therapy, it appears, is making rapid gains all over the United States, and the rapscallions of allopathy are in despair. Persons who formerly rushed off to a doctor whenever they were ill, and docilely swallowed all of his hideous poisosn, now ring up the nearest blacksmith shop and have a mechano-therapist sent over. Doc Tinthoff quotes the Ladies’ Home Journal as authority for the fact that “over three million families in America DO NOT call in a doctor of medicine when they are sick.” Obviously, the days of Johns Hopkins Hospital are numbered. Attacked by the mechano-therapists on one side and by the Maryland Anti-Vivisection Society on the other, it is fast growing ripe for one of its own neat and satisfying autopsies.

From the history of a patient undergoing matrimonial laparotomy in The Evening Sun’s so-called Divorce Clinic:

My husband and I married for a reason that was not creditable to him or me.

Well, dearie, name us one reason that would have been creditable.

Preliminary list of indubitable champeens, respectfully submitted to the Hon. the Bentztown Bard:

• Harvey, the greatest living waiter.
• William, the greatest living janitor.
• Isaac Lobe, the greatest living peruna-swallower.
• John Rider, the greatest living profaniteer.
• Bentz, the greatest living grandfather.

Incidentally, today is the four hundredth anniversary of Rudolph IV, Grand Duke of Schleswig-Holstein, the first man to sleep with his whiskers outside the quilt.

How the taxable basis and the total of city expenditures have increased in Baltimore since 1901:

In brief, the expenditures have increased 151 per cent. in 14 years, while the taxable basis has increased but 94 per cent.

More in sorrow than in anger, I arise again to offer the Rev. Dr. W. W. Davis, wiskinski of the Lord’s Day Alliance, all the space he wants to argue that orchestral concerts on Sunday afternoons would make for immorality in Baltimore. Details if this offer:

1. Dr. Davis is to have all the space he wants, absolutely without limit.
2. Every word of his argument is to be printed exactly as written.
3. Any reply that may be made to it, by me or by anyone else, is to be submitted to him before publication, and he is to have the privilege of editing it as he pleases.
4. In case he does not care to prepare such an argument himself, the privilege is extended to any person he may name, under exactly the same conditions.

Powerful thoughts of the Hon. Aristides Sophocles Goldsborough, LL. B., in the current Municipal Journal:

The General Assembly of Maryland is now in session.
• The bigness of any man depends upon his breadth of view.

Incidentally, Aristides commits the hideous fawks pass of spleaking of the members of the Legislature as “right-thinking.” What next, ye gods, what next? Can it be that he will call them “forward-looking” in his next number?