Baltimore Evening Sun (21 March 1914): 6.

For Governor of Maryland in 1916: The Hon. William J. Ogden.

The betting odds in the Highlandtown gambling hells, as reported by the Lord’s Day Alliance:

100 to 1 that Back River will be wet on Sunday, May 3, 1914. Ditto that ditto will be ditto on ditto ditto 10.

A DAILY THOUGHT. This is a day of reform movement and organizations. The average preacher has not time to learn the names of many of them, not to speak of trying them--and new ones seem to be being born every hour.--The Rev. Dr. C. D. Harris.

The estimable Sunpaper on the Billy Sunday situation:

Any citizen, whether layman or minister, can invite [the Rev. Dr.] Sunday to Baltimore. * * *

Well, then, I hereby formally invite him, and the Hon. Ed Hirsch joins in the invitation. We simply must have Billy; such sport as he promises is not to be missed. Let those clergymen who object to him depart the city while he is here, and so leave him elbow-room for his gigantic bout with the devil. He needs air, space, sea room, but it is not recorded that he needs help. He is a performer a capella, a one-man crusade. Give him a tabernacle, six weeks’ time and $50,000 cash, and he will convert the whole of Baltimore, including even the sly clerics who accepted the historic bribe of the Hon. William H. Anderson.

Seriously, the Rev. Dr. Sunday should be able to give a first-rate show in Baltimore. We backward-lookers, of course, will come in for a furious hammering, but it won’t hurt us: we have withstood it before. But what of the scribes and pharisees? What of the pussy-footed old deacons and whited sepulchres? What of the pious fellows who seek to make the rest of its virtuous by the sword? How will they fare? The more one thinks it over the more one grows confident that they will fare badly, and the more such confidence increases, the more one yearns for the rev. gent. to lay on. Baltimore swarms with such chalky gentry. The time comes for a grand lifting of veils, a general cleaning out. And the Rev. Dr. Sunday, unless my spies lie, is the boy to do the work.

Incidentally, it is agreeable to note that most of those who are opposed to the good Doctor are content to laugh at him. This is a healthy sign: a proof of growing religious toleration. Time was when such whoopers-up of new revelations were received with clubs and brickbats, but that time is no more. Today the opposition enjoys the show and lets it go at that. Does the rev. gent. make his own faith ridiculous by dragging it through the sawdust? Well, so much the better for the true faith! Does he leave behind him a sour distaste for all clown-play and skylarking in the pulpit? Then so much the better for the pulpit! Does he fill ten hearers with mirth for every one he fills with fear? Then so much the better for all of us, for mirth is a healthier emotion than fear!

If the pulpit is to be made into a bull-ring, then why not adorn it with the most talented matador of them all? The near-Sundays whe now cavort and tear their hair in Baltimore are a sorry lot. They imitate his style without being able to imitate his skill. The best of them cannot fill a small church, to say nothing of a tabernacle. They are one-horse performers, inept amateurs. The more they roar, the less they are heard. Even the newspapers begin to shut down upon them. Out the newspapers would not shut down on Sunday. They know a real professor when they see one. Bill would get as much space in one week as all the local quasi-Sam Jones and pseudo-Moodys get in a year. And he would fill that space with warmer stuff. He would give a better show.

The question of his honorarium need trouble no one. He is at the very top of his profession, and he demands the remuneration that goes with such pre-eminence. But if he comes to Baltimore no one will be under any obligation to cough up: there will be no tax levy to pay him. As a matter of fact, nine-tenths of the money he carries away will be put up by the same small group of opulent enthusiasts who meet the costs of all the other uplifts. These gentlemen have the money to spend, and they like to spend it on such enterprises. They are easy marks for all the professional forward-lookers and tin-horn Iokanaans. They support all the crusades that come and go, jumping swiftly from one to another. Such is their notion of a good time. They are entitled to cherish it.

But though Billy is thus eager for the mazuma, it is not recorded that he can be bought. One acquires no immunity by contributing to his privy purse. In this fact lies the chief promise of good sport. The moment he tires of walloping the Devil and begins stirring up the archangsels, the whole town will crowd to the arena. And many volunteers, you may be sure, will step forward with ammunition for his musketoons. I myself will be glad to appear among them. If Dr. Sunday wants to consult them, my secret archives are at his disposal. There he will find true and intimate accounts of all the uplifting schemes launched in Baltimore for ten years past, with the full records of the chief uplifters. There he will find entertaining and juicy stuff.

The New York Sun on the technique of the Hon. William H. Anderson:

Hardly any great surprise will be felt at the indignation expressed by our Senators at Albany over the tactics of William H. Anderson, the imported superintendent of the Anti-Saloon League. As Mr. Anderson draws the lines the issue in his fight is no longer whether prohibition measures shall be enacted by the Legislalure, but rather whether legislators may by browbeating and bulldozing be coerced into fathering bills which their intellects and consciences do not approve and for wlich they have no mandate from their constituents.

Let the estimable Sun beware: Any paper which talks thus has sold itself to the devil, and will be punitively ruined by the “moral element.”

What has become, by the way, of the alleged Maryland Society for Social Hygiene? What of the war of extermination upon the “strictly male”?

And the League for Medical Freedom, Maryland branch? Whither has it drifted?

Boil your drinking water! Get vaccinated on the other arm! Swat the infant fly!

Bit by bit the ingratiating schus of Col. Yeinkely Hook is making him Mayor of Baltimore. The Colonel is a Chochem Kodel.–Yiddish Adv.