Baltimore Evening Sun (3 April 1914): 6.

THE FREE LANCE

The best way to describe Munich is to call it a Norddeutscher Lloyd steamer six miles long and five miles wide, with 25,000 stewards, 100 bands of music, and 50 meals a day.–Memoirs of Col. J. Hook.

The learned Sunpaper on the Rev. Dr. William B. Batz’s romantic search for a $35 Bible:

The difference in these Bibles lies in the binding, paper and illustrations. The text is the same in the cheapest as in the most expensive.

A great family newspaper must know everything. In all departments of human learning it must have curious and dilightful information on tap.

A DAILY THOUGHT. Women who will play cards in their homes for prizes are just as much degenerate, black-leg gamblers as the gamblers in a gambling hell.—The Rev. Dr. Billy Sunday.


The troubles of “A Penitent and Puzzled Person,” as described by himself:

Any sensitive soul might feel that the limit of endurance had been reached when he was accused of being [the Hon.] Mr Mencken in disguise.

It is a physiological fact that pleasure, unduly intensified, becomes an acute form of pain.

From a card of invitation to a lecture on “How to Attract and Protect Wild Birds,” issued by the estimable Roland Park Company:

[The Hon.] Mr. Ernest Harold Baynes of Meriden, New Hampshire The Well Known Authority and Lecturer on Birds and other Wild Creatures At the Woman’s Club, Roland Park.


Can it be that the Roland Park Woman’s Club has become a branch of the Just Government League?


Dost recall, beloved, how the Rev. Dr. Charles M. Levister wooed the ear a month or so ago with moving tales of the sublime benefits and usufructs of prohibition in Coatesville, Pa.? The town he depicted was a young heaven, a place purged of the Rum Demon, a burg rejoicing in its new-found virtue. Well, this same Coatesville has now gone wet again! Five hotels reopened their barrooms on April 1—to excellent business, I have no doubt. Exit the jug trade from West Chester, Lancaster and Parkersburg! Another foul blow to the express companies! And an even fouler blow to the Rev. Dr. Levister!


Some kind friend sends me a copy of Vol. 1, No. 1, of the Woman’s Rebel—the official organ, it would appear, of the most advanced wing of the feminists. These are the rights that it proposes to obtain for the persecuted fair:


Judging by the few advanced feminists that I have personally witnessed, the exercise of right No. 5 will never be possible so long as men are free and have legs to run away. The same male right is also an insuperable bar to two other feminist rights, the which I leave you to select for yourself.


An anonymous moralist on the high crimes and misdemeanors of a groveling worm:

[The Hon.] Mr. Mencken, who attempts enter the realm of morals with the big stick of Nietzsche and lay waste all that is decent and respectable.

For example, the bribing of the friars minor. For example, the Anti-Saloon League leg show. For example, the holy mission of the Hon. Sunday-school Field, LL. B. For example, the Caffeine Trust. For example, the Ministerial Perunion. For example, the woman hunt.

The Hon. Zechia Judd, Ph. D., on a present discontent:

On a count of noses, even after [the Rev. Dr.] Sunday had winnowed a town, the devil could probably show the larger census.

Well, why not? Dr. Sunday gives a good show, but the devil gives an even better one.

The funeral committee of the Merchants and Manufacturers’ Association has ordered new black gloves all round for the obsequies of the Greater Baltimore Committee.—Adv.

From the weekly press-sheet of the Research and News Department of the Methodist Episcopal Temperance Society:

Sir Victor Horsley names 44 diseases due to alcoholic liquor, alone or as a contributing factor. * * * They include such ills as * * * skin congestion, erisipelas, blood poisoning, diphtheria, cholera, leading poisoning. * * *

But why leave out cholera infantum, measles and smallpox? Why forget compound fractures of the femur? Isn’t it a fact that drink inspires thousands to dance the maxixe, and that many who dance it break their legs?

The Rev. Dr. Billy Sunday’s Revised Version of the story of David and Goliath:

When David was at the camp of the army the next morning, Goliath, the big giant, strutted out in front of the Philistine army and shouted at the other fellows: “Come on, you mutts; if you want anything out of me, come on out and get it! I’ll give you what’s coming to you!” And he strutted back and forth. David said to Saul: “Who’s that big stiff making all that noise out there?” “That’s Goliath,” replied Saul. “Well, why don’t you go out and get him?” asked David. “He does that every day,” answered Saul, “and he’s got my goat.” “I’ll go after him,” said David, as he put on Saul’s armor, which was so big that he looked like a man in a hand-me-down suit four sizes too big for him. “Nothing doing,” said David, and he took off the armor and went down to the brook and picked out some smooth pebbles. He put one in his sling and went out and whirled it around his head and fired it at the giant. The stone hit him on the coco between the lamps and he went to the mat for the count.

Obviously, a great improvement upon the account in I Samuel, xvii. More vivid, more succinct, more racy. But think what we are in for when all our local vaudevillians of the pulpit begin trying to imitate Bill. Imagine Matthew, i, 1-16, in this new Sundayese!

One week more—and then the saving hiatus, the compensatory interregnum!

Some anonymous friend of the uplift on its great saints and martyrs:

[The Hon.] Mr. Levering and [the Hon.] Mr. Bonaparte, who have helped to make Baltimore a city fit for the rearing of our boys and girls.

Especially, the Hon. Mr. Bonaparte. For example, by arguing that public schools are as degrading as public souphouses.

Boil your drinking water! Get ready for Back River! Swat the M. domestica!