Evening capital and Maryland gazette. (Annapolis, Md.) 1910-1922, 1912-01-18
WHISKERPHOBIA.
A Modern Emotion That is Now
Agitating the Eminent Or. Wiley.

Mrs. Jean Csbell o'Neill, resident
in summer Of Arundel-on-the-B Bay, near
Annapolis, and a writer of some note,
writing for Harper's Weekly of this
month, has the following on Wiley
VS.. Whiskers"
Having fought q good fight
against germs IN cans and germs
preserved, and craving other worlds
to conquer, DR.. Wiley, the food pur-
list, now attacks the lair Of the whisk-
ers germ. But, one wonders, is not
the good doctor fitting a lance at a
windmill for are not American whisk-
ers conspicuous chiefly by their alb
sence
Probably no more crowded point of
observation of the fifty-seven varieties
of men that make up an important
part of the great American public can
be found than the New York approach
to the Brooklyn Bridge during the rush
hours. If one is calm enough to OBJ
serve anything in this human whirl-
pool, he is likely to note the absence
of any exhibit in the way of hair-cov-
ering chins among the masculine sea
of faces tossing before him. Facefurze
is rarer than gold.
Boards belonged to the age of rev.
erence, venerability, and all the other
leisurely virtues. In ancient times,
when legend and tradition held the
place of booklore, and news-letters
were undreamed Of, the graybeard
rather than the beardless youth was
held to be font of wisdom.
"The passage of years was marked
by the length and whiteness of the
beard, and, as Knowledge came chiefly
through personal experience in those
primitive times, the older one was, the
more he knew. Now the day press
leaves nothing of life unstated, the
very young are often as sophisticated
as the grandsires, sometimes more So
So age and wisdom are no longer sy-
nonymous.
1T is curious to note that four
Presidents who had Civil War records
were bearded. In sense the beard
was badge Of courage, for the bar
Der vote mounts into the thousands
and what self-respecting tonsorial ar
fist would vote for man who did not
shave? Boards were title worn in the
South before the sixties. Men of that
period who did so indulge themselves
were, as a rule. either in the cold
North or bleak West, where chest and
throat protection was considered be-
fore beauty. There is not extant a
portrait of chief Executive before
the war-that period that is the di-
viding line between the old and the
new in this country-that does not
show a clean chin. The four years
struggle took most of the niceties out
of life. A battlefield has little sug-
gestion of a careful toilet, and men
who before the trouble began would
have taken shame to themselves if not
clean shaven by their 'body servants"
daily now let nature resume sway and
let hair grow unchecked over faces
as weeds sprang up in the once care
fully cultivated plantations of the land.
Most of the officers wore boards !;
all of the great ones did. But with
the return of peace and the invention
of easy methods of shaving whiskers
practically departed from polite So
ciety.
1t is not even modern emotion,
this whiskerphobia that is now agi-
tating the eminent DIR. Wiley, for
centuies ago bearded like the pard'
was not descriptive of a macaroni, but
of the rough, the strong, uncouth,
and the dangerous.
"There is in this latest crusade
more than a suggestion of the infu-
ence feminine. Only benedict would
have thought the game worth while.
Was there ever woman who cared
for hair on the chin of her particular
masculine property? Were not the
author of the charges against whis-
kers marred he probably would have
reserved his fire perhaps unsheathed
his sword or his facile pen to stab or
to blast the germs that Turk in dead
hair now piled high above otherwise
dainty feminine heads. But that
might be indiscreet, so DR.. Wiley lets
the female of the species 60 all I'M
chided on her top-heavy way"