Baltimore Evening Sun (10 February 1914): 6.

Tupperian burbling of the Hon. Aristides Sophocles Goldsborough in the current Municipal Journal:

Liberalness of spirit is always more effective than narrow, stupid prejudices. Nobody can afford to attack the littleness of another man until he has developed a superior bigness in himself. False pictures don’t make corrupt conditions. Wild talk is no proof that wild things exist. The proof of one’s public spirit is not in self-boastings. A discord breeder is a public curse.

Say what you will, Aristides is there with this soft, caressing mush. When it comes to the unguenting of individual clients, the palm must still go, no doubt, to the Hon. Goose Grease Altfeld, LL. B., author of the Code Petroleum. But Aristides, I opine, has a vastly superior talent for murmuring generalities. He is the Martin Tupper of this age and vintage. His is a gift that woos the cockles of the ears and oils the rachets of the heart.

A DAILY THOUGHT. Evening papers are often more honest than morning papers, because they are written by ill-paid and hard-worked underlings in a great hurry, and there is no time for more timid people to correct them.—Gilbert K. Chesterton.

The name of the Hon. S. M. Wood, successor to the Hon. George Arnold Frick as editor of the Democratic Telegram, disappears from the flagstaff of the Telegram with the current issue. I warned the Hon. Mr. Wood against greasing the immoral City Club—and he did not heed me. Let his successor be more careful!

The Hon. Lawrence Turnbull, a gentleman whose years and good citizenship entitle him to the highest consideration, protests in today’s Letter Column against what he regards as the undue violence of my occasional attacks in this place upon uplifters and utopians. Admitting, for the sake of argument, that his objection is sound, my reply and defense is that I did not set the rules of the game. Until the Hon. Charles J. Bonaparte, LL. D., converted his pleading for the armed pursuit of miserable prostitutes into mere buncombe, abuse and misrepresentation, I always mentioned him in this place with the respect due all honest men. Until Dr. O. Edward Janney revealed dialectic methods that were unfair, disingenuous and preposterous, I always assumed his good faith. Until the Hon. Samuel E. Pentz began filling the Letter Column of The Evening Sun with downright and palpable fictions, I never questioned his honor. Until the Hon. Eugene Levering broke. into the newspapers with proclamations which made the town laugh at him, I never presumed to treat him as a comedian. And so with all the rest. I challenge the Hon. Mr. Turnbull to show that I have ever written anything abusive, or even disrespectful, against any man who is not himself given habitually to the unfair abuse of honest opponents.

Anticipating the report of the Vice Commission and the passage of the four blackmail bills, the Boy Snouts have laid in 200 electric searchlights, 40 scaling ladders and 250 pairs of handcuffs.

More than 30 indignant Old Subscribers call my attention to the fact that the name of the Hon. Charles J. Bonaparte, LL. D., was left out of yesterday’s list of maligant moralists voted for in the Sunpaper’s “six leading citizens” contest. It is a duty and a pleasure to rectify the omission. The Hon. Mr. Bonaparte received 1,625 votes, thus gaining a place on the sublime roster of saints between that of Dr. Howard A. Kelly and that of the Hon. Morris A. Soper, C. J. How the hon. gent. came to get so many votes I do not know, and discreetly refrain from guessing. I suspect, but do not accuse, the stockholders of the Harvester Trust. It will all come out in the sworn return of campaign expenses.

These returns, by the way, are coming in very slowly. I printed my own yesterday, and that of the Hon. Ed. Hirsch was filed this morning. But the Rev. Dr. W. W. Davis has yet to tell us under oath how he got his six votes and the Hon. Eugene Levering is still silent about his 33. Here is the Hon. Mr. Hirsch’s statement:

RECEIPTS. Contributions from Suunday violators, Back River and part of Curtis Bay * * * One near-diamond, made from glass which contained whisky, actual value $ .03 Donation from Personal Liberty League and Daughters of Liberty .13 Contributions from brewery-wagon drivers and bartenders .23 Personal contribution * * * One sea-going diamond, size of iceberg which sank Titanic; weight, 69 karats, 1 rutabaga and ½ pint; actual value 69.03 Total $69.42

EXPENDITURES. Copies of Sunpaper and Evening Sun containing voting coupons $ 1.55 Wines and liquors (left over from holidays) delivered to relatives for cutting and writing name therein 68.00 Stamps (parcel post) .14 Advertising in Municipal Journal 13.23 One pair shears (second hand) formerly used as editor .19 Total $83.11 Receipts 69.05 Deficit $14.08 (Signed) Edward Hirsch. (The Wet Hope).

For 10 days past my ante-rooms have been filled with tipsters bringing news of a projected assault upon my moral and literary endeavors by certain members of the Ministerial Union, a local association of divines. It was reported to me with the greatest particularity that such-and-such a gentleman of the cloth was in charge of the proposed resolution, and that it was to be introduced at yesterday’s meeting of the Union—at which meeting, by the way, the Sunpaper was ecstatically greased for refusing an advertisement of beer in general and printing many eloquent advertisements of specific beers. But a cog slipped somewhere, or some holy man got cold feet, and so the resolution did not come up.

I may be permitted, I trust, to deplore the failure of the plan, and to hope that it will be resuscitated anon. Such an assault, I believe, is highly beneficial to both sides. On the one hand, it gets its clerical captains a lot of free publicity, and wins them repute as hard sluggers for virtue, and conceals their neglect of their parochial duties, and so promotes their call to wider fields. And on the other hand, it stimulates the parts of speech of the man attacked, and inspires him to entertaining and instructive reprisals. As a result of yesterday’s fiasco I am left with a column of excellent but useless stuff on my hands. It took me two hours to write it. I might have spent my time better at the Czerny exercises.

Free tip to the Boy Snouts: Start a vice crusade in Annapolis! Easy work! Good sport!