Baltimore Evening Sun (3 March 1914): 6.

The estimable Hot Towel of this morning prints a long article upon the latest of the alleged offenses of the Hon. McCay McCoy, C. E., and puts a large black heading upon it. Time was when the Towel was far more gentle with the hon gent. But that was before he had ever been accused of withholding hard-earned city advertising from the towelian columns–and also before he refused to come across with $100 for a writeup in the Domesday Book.

A DAILY THOUGHT. Going to church don’t make anybody a Christian, any more than taking a wheelbarrow into a garage makes it an automobile.--The Rev. Billy Sunday, D. D.

A volume on the life and times of the Rev. Dr. Billy Sunday, by the Rev. Dr. Ram’s Horn Brown, comes from the moral press of of the Fleming H. Revell Company at the psychological moment. It is entitled “The Real Billy Sunday” and presents an intimate picture of the man chosen to rescue Baltimore from the society of Babylon and Gomorrah. My advice to all right-thinkers is that they buy and read this book, which may be had for a dollar or so in any book store. It is full of interesting stuff, and the Billy Sunday that emerges from it is a spicy and likable fellow, with what seems to be a genuine passion for the uplift in him.

Dr. Brown, as I have said, goes into intimate and entertaining details. It appears, for example, that the Rev. Dr. Sunday is “quite fastidious about his clothes” and that he “carries a half dozen suits with him, in a wardrobe trunk, that takes them through without a crease,” and that “he sees to it that they are all kept pressed and ready to put on.” A few years ago he always wore a white vest, but this was finally rejected because it made him look too much like a preacher, and now “he is usually seen in a two-piece suit, with a belt.” His linen, it appears, is always clean, and his neckties are “very neat and tasty.”

These ties cost the rev. doctor a good deal of money every year, not only because they are expensive to begin with, but also because he destroys a good many of them by his habit of profuse perspiration. His pulpit is a platform 20 feet long and 8 feet wide, and in the heat of his exhortations he covers the whole of it every few seconds. The result is a copious sweating, as fatal to neckwear as it is to the devil. After every sermon, indeed, the learned evangelist has to rush to his hotel and make a complete change. Hence the wardrobe, trunk and the half dozen suits--enough to last the average preacher a geological epoch.

The Rev. Dr. Sunday was born in Story county, Iowa, November 19, 1862, four months after his father had died in the Civil War. His mother, who is still living, was so poor that he and his elder brother had to be sent to an orphan asylum, and there they spent four years. When he got out, at 16, he spent four years at various odd jobs. While working at Marshalltown, Iowa, he joined the local baseball club, and soon his extraordinary skill as a baserunner attracted the attention of “Pop” Anson, of Chicago, who recruited him for the old White Stockings. At 21 he was a big leaguer, and holding up his end with such immortals as Clarkson, Pfeffer, Dalrymple and KeIly.

He was converted at the Pacific Garden Mission in Chicago by the Rev. Dr. Harry Monroe, and began preaching while he was still a baseball player. When he quit the diamond he got a job in the Chicago Young Men’s Christian Association and later became advance man for the Rev. Dr. J. Wilbur Chapman, an eminent revivalist of 20 years ago. In the winter of 1895-6 Dr. Chapman unexpectedly retired, and simultaneously Dr. Sunday was called to the little town of Garner, Iowa, to conduct a revival on his own account. He went and conquered, the proceeds being $68. Since then he has never lacked a call, and, according to Dr. Brown, he has converted 568,000 sinners--almost exactly the present population of Baltimore. About 2,130,000 persons have heard him preach, “and probably half as many more have read reports of his sermons”--or, say, 3,200,000 in all. This makes his batting average .177.

Doctor Sunday was ordained to the Presbyterian ministry in Chicago in 1905. On June 13, 1912, the provost and canons of Westminster College, at New Wilmington, Pa., conferred upon him the ancient degree of doctor of divinity. Such, in brief, is the gentleman chosen to rescue us from the slough of sin in which we now wallow. May he have better luck than the greater matadors of rectitude who have gone down to defeat in the past! Baltimore, I opine, is a hard nut for evangelists to crack. Despite the gigantic efforts of the Rev. Dr. W. W. Davis, the Hon. William H. Anderson, the Hon. Eugene Levering, the Hon. C. J. Bonaparte and other such worthy strivers for perfection, our people insist upon remaining human. Will Dr. Sunday change them? We shall see.

Heading on a labored editorial in the current American Issue:

Did the Result of the Last Election Mean a Repudiation of the Anti-Saloon League?

Answer: Of course not! The idea! The result of the last election was an indorsement of the Anti-Saloon League--and then three cheers, and then a tiger, and then Hoch! Hoch! Dreimal hoch! and then another indorsement, and then six cheers, and then a whole cageful of tigers and so on ad infinitum. No need for Dr. Levister to plead and argue and bring up his evidence. The facts speak for themselves. The Anti-Saloon League was indorsed within an inch of its life.

Fair warning to all gentlemen of the cloth who now seek to get free publicity by boarding the Billy Sunday bandwagon: I am the original Billy Sunday man, and stand ready to defend my rights in the courts. Witnesses: The Hon. William H. Anderson and the Rev. Dr. Charles M. Levister.

P. S.--I am also the original Hook man. Do not be deceived by the immoral efforts of the Hon. James H. Preston to grab the Hook boom. Witness: The Hon. Jacobus Hook, K. T.

Whoop-la! Get out the dog whips and the slapsticks! The vice crusade is on us!--Moral Adv.

All that remains is for the Hon. Jack Cornell to get some “moral” Police Commissioner in Minneapolis to certify that the town is now a young heaven, despite the complaint of the local City Club that “Vice is on the increase.” How beautifully the uplifters help one another!

Boil your drinking water! Down with the “strictly male~” Good old Dashing Harry!