Baltimore Evening Sun (16 January 1914): 6.

The Hon. Dashing Harry on the life and times of the Hon. Goose Grease Altfeld, LL. B.:

Mr. Altfeld * * * has taught Sunday-school. So did I before I got into politics.

Don’t boast, dear friend! The Hon. Sunday-school Field kept it up even after he had got into politics.

A DAILY THOUGHT. A.wife is one who always believes the worst.—Brigham Young. ——— My proposal that a stet be entered against the high crimes and misdemeanors of the late Anderson selig, and that his successor, the Rev. Dr. Tom Hare, be thus allowed to begin his own chicaneries with a clean slate—this humane suggestion has been received with gratifying hospitality by the moral element, of whom I have the honor to be one. The following sentiments, so typical of the rest, are from the Hon. Ed. Hirsch:

I am not one to hold grudges forever. The acts of the late Anderson, true enough, were of a character to give great offense to every man of keen ethical sensibilities, but Anderson has now departed from our midst. Let us forgive him his errors, and try to forget them. The Hon. Mr. Hare, his successor, deserves the benefit of every assumption. If he is another Anderson, we shall find it out to due course; if he is not, it will be highly unjust to burden him with crimes in which he had no hand.

It is, therefore, moved and seconded that the Rev. Dr. Hare be considered wholly blameless for the poor reputation that the Anti-Saloon League has borne in the past, and there being no sign of opposition, I hereby declare the motion carried. This amnesty, I need not add, applies not only to Dr. Hare, but also and more especially to the Hon. Young Cochran, the Hon. Charles M. Levister, the Hon. Bibb Mills and the Rev. Dr. Cy Keen. They are all forgiven! Let them sin no more!

Advice to the hon. gentlemen of the General Assembly: Pass the suffrage amendment and have it over. Certainly, you don’t want to have your eyes gouged out, your ear-drums cracked, your heads made bald by woe!

A can of bear’s grease to Dr. W. W. Davis for any evidence, however ludicrous, that orchestral concerts on Sunday afternoons would help to promote the white slave trade.

From an oration by the Hon. G. G. Altfeld on present discontents:

thinking and intelligent people.

A distinction with a very real difference. Upon that difference, indeed, hangs the whole tragedy of democracy.

Meanwhile, what has become of my old friend Doc McMains, and his list of reputable allopaths who belong to the League for Medical Freedom, Maryland Branch? And what has become of the Western Maryland sawbones–I forget his name–who was bawling so loudly against vaccination a year or so ago? And who has stolen dear old Bath-House Jean, pet of the Maryland Anti-Vivisection Society, and his sitz-bath cure for hydrophobia?

Don’t give us Home Rule, gents! Don’t let us run our own police department! We are so sinful that we can’t trust ourselves! Let us remain virtuous—like Salisbury!

We are patiently waiting for the samples of “inspiring and reformatory fiction” from the gifted pen of the Hon. Frank A. Munsey, promised us by [the Hon.] Mr. Mencken. The strophes published in Monday’s Free Lance were far from convincing and failed to show the great genius of the author.

Very well. But what of the following purple passage from the seventh chapter of “Derringforth” (Vol. 1, page 30) :

“It is outrageous, father,” said young Derringforth, white with indignation. “I would have thrown the fellow out of the office. He is a robber–twenty per cent. a month, two hundred and forty per cent. a year, ten thousand dollars for the use of fifty thousand and for only thirty days! Why, it is damnable!” “So it is, Phil–damnable in the extreme–but we had better pay four times ten thousand than have our paper go to protest,” replied the father. “But the impudence of the cur–think of his prying into our affairs as he did! I could hardly keep my hands off him.” “I feel as strongly as you do, Phil, against him and his class; but we are in his power and must accept his terms or go to the wall.” “Would it not be better to call a halt than to place ourselves in the hands of such a heartless scoundrel?” “Call a halt? Never so long as the name of Derringforth can be kept afloat….”

How now, dear Brandes? What of this name that floats, O Charles-Augustin-Hippolyte-Eugene-Auguste-Max-Frangois Sante-Beuve? What, indeed, could be more inspiring than a name with all the qualities of Ivory soap?

Further contributions to the roster of incomparable champeens:

Mox, the greatest living triangle-player. The Mozart, the greatest living bauverein. Jack Cornell, the greatest living Boy Snout. Dashing Harry, the great living greatest living.

Today, by the way, is the one thousandth anniversary of Geoffrey of Monmouth, the first man to say “I don’t know nothing about music, but I know what I like.”

The Hon. Dan Loden is in favor of every Democratic principle and idea ever heard of, from the Missouri Compromise to the direct primary, and from gnosticism to chautauquaism, and from the spoils system to civil service reform, and from trustbusting to latituditiarianism, and from the conservation of energy to the Ptolemaic cosmogony, and from the theory of least squares to the impenetrability of matter, and from free trade to the binomial theorem, and from hedonism to the Montessori method, and from the Emmanuel movement to the initiative and referendum, and from the short ballot to Puritanism, and from Bergsonism to the crime of '73, and from John Tyler’s policy toward the Barbary States to Dr. Woodrow Wilson’s policy toward Mexico, Sweden, Guatemala, San Domingo, Persia, Afghanistan, Labrador, Mecklenburg-Schwerin and the Argentine Republic. Dan swallows them all, and then yells for more.—Adv.

For Mayor of Baltimore in 1915: The Hon. Jacobus Hook, K. T., the greatest publican since Levi.

For Governor of Maryland in 1916: The Hon. Jacobus Hook, K. T., the greatest ditto since ditto.

For Senator to Congress in 1918: The Hon. Jacobus Hook, K. T., the greatest ditto since ditto.