Baltimore Evening Sun (19 February 1914): 6.

All that remains is for Dr. Donald R. Hooker to knock the stuffing out of the Gore verdict in the Maryland Suffrage News.

Now that the Hon. D. Harry has formally seconded the nomination of Col. Jacobus Hook for Mayor in 1916, all that remains is the explosion of the fireworks. But I am still the Original Hook Man, and hereby warn off all other claimants, however eminent. The Colonel will be the greatest Mayor Battimore ever had, as he is the greatest Tax Collector Christendom ever had.--Political Adv.

A DAILY THOUGHT. A Newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.--Hannah More.

The editor of The Evening Sun hands me a polite note from my estimable friend the Rev. Dr. John I. Yellott, of Belair, in reply to a challenge I have been printing in this place for four or five days past. By that challenge I called upon the Rev. Dr. Yellott to deny on his honor that he wrote a letter appearing in the immoral Evening News of February 11--a letter dated “Baltimore,” signed “Clergyman,” and purporting to be from a “minister of Baltimore,” and, by inference, from a member of the Ministerial Union. Dr. Yellott, in the note aforesaid, discreetly evades the question of its authorship, and so I put on the black cap and solemnly accuse him of having written it, and as solemnly post and denounce him for a gross violation of the punctilio, wholly unworthy of so virtuous a man.

What I object to in that letter (and in my objection I am supported by all civilized codes of honor) is its studied and unfair anonymity. I am not one, I hope, to protest against the just penalties and usufructs of my crimes, which are many and lamentable. Nor do I cry out against being publicly pilloried when I merely make an ass of myself, which is at least twice a week. But I think that all honest men will agree that a man has grounds for entering a sound exception when he is attacked by name, and for offenses he has previously denied committing, from behind the shield of a studied anonymity, and in a place admittedly hostile. What is more, I am convinced that my learned friend and ghostly conselor, deep down in his heart, is of exactly the same opinion, and that he would not undertake to justify his attack before a court of five honorable bartenders.

This is the second time I have had to take the rev. dr. to task for the very same sin. The first time he admitted my case by agreeing to sign his full name and dignities, and the ensuing disputation, though extremely short, was at least in the open. I forgave him then, and I forgive him now. Let him retire to the crypt of his Belair Cathedral and devote himself for a space to earnest self-examination. He will emerge, I opine, with a strong disgust for dialectic, ptomaines, and making a vow to use them no more.

Meanwhile, the Hon. Tom Hare, D. D., has been to Annapolis--and conquered the whole darn gang, including even the journalists. I have yet to enjoy the felicity of viewing him personally, but my spies down there tell me that he is matronly in figure and hearty in manner, with a loud laugh and a happy mien. The syndics of the Anti-Saloon League have not only the cold blood of serpents, but also the cunning. They beat us by sending agreeable playboys against us--the two-handed Anderson, the genial Levister, the courtly Bibb Mills, the ingratiating Cy Keen, and now the falstaffian Hare!

The Detroit Free Press on the utter failure of last October’s much-advertised vice crusade to rid Detroit of prostitution:

It has been the policy of the free lance squad to take women known to have been in the restricted district before October 15 last to police headquarters and register them.

In other words, it has been the policy of the police to continue a form of registration and regulation, in spite of all the “moral” caterwauling against it. And this policy, of course, has been the fruit of necessity: they have found it absolutely essential to keep some sort of watch over the women “saved” in October. But now, as I recorded the other day, the courts stand against them, and the evidence on their registers is of little value. Under the old system of regulation, these somen confessed that they were prostitutes and even sent in their photographs–as they did here in Baltimore until the Soper-Niles-Ammidon Police Board began “cleaning up.” But at present all the police have to show is their own belief, based on common report, that a given woman is a prostitute, and Judge Jeffries decided last Friday that such “common report” is not evidence. The result is that the police are practically helpless.

But the snouters of Detroit, of course, are having the time of their lives. The police are flooded with anonymous tips from suspicious householders and others, as the Baltimore grand jury was flooded with tips after the last vice crusade here. According to the Free Press, the officer delegated to read such communications is working overtime. He “had two envelopes crammed with names and addresses to investigate Sunday. These, alone, he said, would furnish enough work for the squad for weeks.” Such is snoutery. And meanwhile, the Hon. Jack Cornell stands by his solemn word that all commercialized vice in Detroit has been suppressed.

Definitions from the bright lexicon of the so-called Maryland Society for Social Hygiene:

Husband–One afflicted with one highly contagious and dangerous disease, and probably two; a scoundrel and voluptuary; a low-flung rogue and murderer; a carrier of plagues. Brother--A frequenter of disorderly houses; an habitual associate of white slave traders; damaged goods. Son--A debauchee; a libertine. Uncle--An old rascal; a villain. Fiance–One whose kiss is poison; a walking pestilence; a moral and physical leper. Father--An old scoundrel who frequents the dens of white slave dealers, and will never be cured until the slavers capture his own daughter.

The Hon. Tom Hare, D. D., in the current American Issue:

It is God’s will that the liquor traffic shall die.

Still another new privy councillor and spokesman of Heaven! If the news he brings is true, how is it that Moses never heard of it? Why was it concealed from Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? Why was Paul so strangely deceived about it?

The betting odds among the handbooks, as reported by the police:

4 to 1 that all four blackmail bills go through with a bang. 4 to 1 that the oyster is canned.