Baltimore Evening Sun (17 January 1914): 6.

THE FREE LANCE

Profound and aristidessophoclesgoldsboroughian threnody on the exitus of the Hon. William H. Anderson, by the Hon. Alexander Francis, D. D. S.:

It takes many different kinds of people to make a world. God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform.


Why not add the rest of the funeral-baked meats, to wit:

We are here today and gone tomorrow! Who would ’a’ thought that he would the next? I seen him hardly a mouth ago, and he looked the picture of health. Well, well, well, a body can’t never tell what is goin’ to happen! Don’t he look natural!


Meanwhile, it is to be noted that the weeping widow has already got herself another. Let us all hope that Anderson’s clothes will fit Hare!


A DAILY THOUGHT. The original sin of the world is not contempt for arbitrary laws, but respect for them.-- The Rev. Charles Ferguson.


A writer in American Medicine calls attention to the filthiness of most of the chewing gums on the market, including even certain widely advertised brands. The chicle used in the manufacture of chewing gum, he says, becomes contaminated in the process of gathering it from the Achras sapota, and these contaminations are often but imperfectly removed thereafter. They consist of fly legs, spider tails, wasp wings and the entire cadavers of smaller insects, not to mention bits of tree bark and other such vegetable remains. Most of them, true enough, are not poisonous, but not one of them is a comfortable thing to chew.


The fact that chewing gum contains such impurities is concealed by the heavy coating of sugar that the manufacturers give to each piece. If you want proof that they are inside nevertheless, all you need do is to hold a piece of gum up to a strong light. You will thus get a sort of X-ray portrait of the fly legs, etc., and may subsequently expose and remove them by a simple surgical operation. Or, if you prefer, you may chew them with the gum, as in the past.


Far be it from me to print free boosts for books, but if you are not buying the successive volumes of the new Everyman’s Encyclopedia you are missing one of the best book bargains ever offered to the public. So far 10 volunies have been issued, and two more are to come. The price in the stores is 35 cents a volume, which makes the cost of the whole work the incredibly small sum of $4.20.


What do you get for this? A crude rehash of older and larger encyclopedias, out of date and badly printed? Not at all. What you get is a reference work that is up to the minute, a work intelligently and diligently edited, and printed clearly upon excellent paper. Here and there, true enough, one may note errors and gaps. In the American articles, in particular, there is an occasional slip. And, to take one example of omission, I find no mention whatever of Arthur, Count Gobineau, author of a famous treatise on human inequality. But the same criticisms may be leveled against every encyclopedia ever published, and the Everyman’s, I believe, deserves them less than most.


Such a small work, of course, can never take the place of the monumental Encyclopedia Brittanica, nor even of the New International. But it has the inestimable merit, so painfully lacking in the Brittanica, of being succinct. One does not have to plow through 50,000 words to get at the information one seeks. Every article is boiled down to the smallest possible compass, and yet it is rare to find an essential fact omitted. All in all, it is a truly astonishing work of reference, and for practical purposes it has nothing to yield to its larger rivals.


How prohibition works in Tennessee, even with the Webb law in full force, as described in a Martin (Tenn.) dispatch to the Nashville Banner:

The law in regard to keeping a record of the shipments of whisky brings out the amount that has been received in the different towns of Weakley county during December. * * * During the month Sharon received 852 barrels; Martin, 1,840; Dresen, 1,532; Greenfield, 962; Gleason, 897; Terrell, 8–making a total of 6,091 in one month. * * * Martin has a population of about 3,500. The whisky received here would give each of her citizens a little over one pint. Dresden received 1,532 quarts; her population is about 800. Consequently, she received enough to give each inhabitant nearly two quarts.

By “each inhabitant,” of course, the correspondent of the Banner means every man, womab and child. Estimating the nonbibbing women and children at one-half of the population, this indicates that every male citizen of Dresden drank at least four quarts of whisky in December, or one quart a week. Even Salisbury, the Eastern Shore or Highlandtown would have to sweat to beat that record.

The Medical Times on the current bosh about “white slave traders” attacking young women with hypodermic needles:

There is no needle man, unless some weak-minded boy, whose mind has been fired by newspaper stories, blunderingly attempts to frighten a girl with a pin of needle. None of the alleged victims has been able to show that she was really attacked with a hypodermic needle. None has shown the tell-tale wheal which follows hypodermic injection. Physicians know that it would be almost, if not quite impossible, to inject the contents of a hypodermic syringe into a woman’s flesh and only give the sensation of a pin prick.


Here is expert testimony, but what is expert testimony against “expert” testimony? The “specialists” in pursuit of “white slave traders” are all for the hypodermic. It appeals to the popular credulity; it is good for a lot of space in the newspapers; it inspires fools with more money than sense to pay for new “ivestigations.” All that remains is for some ass to propose a Federal law making it a felony for anyone not licensed by the vice crusaders to have a hypodermic syringe in his possession. Why, indeed, have the clowns of Congress overlooked this royal road to publicity?


A SANE SUNDAY. Sunday is a day not only of prayer, but also of rest, of innocent recreation and pastime, and of healthful diversions which are profitable to mind and body. Sunday should not be a day of gloom, sadness and melancholy.--Cardinal Gibbons.


Farewell to the Hon. William H. Anderson, the last of the Antinomians!–Liquor Ring Adv.


Boil your drinking water! Vote for the mother’s pension bill! Beware of the Boy Snouts!