Americus times-recorder. [volume] (Americus, Ga.) 1891-current, 1917-08-27

S from barbarlsm.'
Vi Now the Paca street Heinie in Bal
S timore who spoiled good cigar-makel
e when he allowed his wayward progeny
: to drift from the honest calling of the
family into the fields of literature
a would no doubt, shed bitter brine in
E his beer, if he could read and under
stand the gaudy imbecilities of H. l.
Mencken.
And if the fat German burhger could
> realize that Heinie Junior was pos
: ing as a Southern gentleman and
therefore entitled to speak by the card,
the honest old tobacco smith would
probably wonder in his dull Teuton
way how his offspring possibly could
have become a gentleman unbe-
krownst to everybody in his home
town, or how he qualified as South
erner because he once wrote weekly
editorials on pumpernickel u the Bal
itimore Sunpaper
The plain truth of the matter is that
the young Mencker person is some
thing of a type of the unregenerate
hyphenate, whose cranial development
! is slow to absorb any kind of refine
ment beyond the circle of "kultur,'
and slurs over the density of his in
itellect with a ludicrous parade of Ian
guage borrowed chiefly from the liter
AZURE of pornography and the fetid
pages of pathology.
The faded purple of his verbal
patches is usually woven with the con
scious purpose of wheedling reich
marks from the public by making him
self motley to the view, so when he
attempts to cast off the garb of the
clown and wrestle with an idea, he
ceases to be amusing and merely be-
come ludicrous, after the fashion of
hired mourner who gets lit-up at the
funeral feast, soils his sackcloth and
hiccups through the solemn ritual.
For young Heinie, you see, is not
Johnny Ludlow; he is just a German
clown
We say to Heinie, in the language of
Whistler. we are not arguing with
you; we are telling you," but if one
were disposed to break a goose quill
with the bird that grows EN-, it would
be worth while to set up this gem as
"a trophy to jouet over.
Georgia 3 in thirty years has
not produced a single first class book
or picture or poem or scientific dis
covery or political or philosophical
idea or other sound contribution to hui
man advancement"
Now Heinie Mencken's only honest
| title to fame is the claim that he un-
derstands the German philosopher,
Nietzsche-when Nietzsche didn't even
claim to understand himself For ten
years he has never been able to write
On anything from the beauties of Mar
tin Tupper's "Proverbial Philosophy
t. the divine attributes of Buddha,
without dragging in the name Of the
| lunatic of hamburg. On this and his
Qualifications Of sauer-kraut rest hi>
more substantial claims to immortal
iity.
If a poem or a scientific discovers
were 10 come out OF GeoFsla II WOULD
never find Judgment in the Mazurian
marsh of German "kultur" which
Heinie calls his brain.
And yet it so happens that at the
very time when the Mencken was try
ing to iron the gutturals out of hs
infant speech in aBltimore's Teutonic
Ghetto, a Georgian by the name Of
Sidney Lanier was doing what he could
at Johns Hopkins University to en-
Tighten Baltimoreans of high caste on
the finer beauties of English poetry
and the structure of the English novel,
and was writing the exquisite lyrics
which England herself has ranked
with the masterpieces of Shelley.
If one were to begin an enumeration
of creative GpOrpians with the authOr