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great deal more daring.'* He surely has no admiration for Coolidge, for in The Evening Sun ,of June 14, 1926, he says: "Cal a 'as plainly a fifth-rate'r. Most of the larger problems confronting the President were quite beyond his grasp. He was simply a professional jobholder." He is even more uncomplimentary of the late Dr. Harding, for turning again to "Notes on Democracy" we read on page 112 that "when the lamented Harding sat in Lincoln's chair his hours of ease were spent with bootleggers, not with metaphysicians; his notion of a good time was to refresh himself in the manner of a small-town Elk, at golf, poker and guzzling."
Finally, of the present occupant of the White House he charitably states (The Evening Sun, March 10, 1930): "He (Hoover) turns out to be a shabby and somewhat pathetic fellow, without principle, without courage, and with little if any capacity for making people believe in him." . . .
And so on ad infinitum and ad nauseam. For therest, the Doctor dislikes the theatre, the movies, radio programs, "tinpot revivalism,'' the Rmerican farmer, prohibition, American cooking, jazz music, Los Angeles and golf.
One might well wonder, to quote his own hypothetical query addressed to himself on page 304 of his "Prejudices, Fifth Series": If you find so much that ia unworthy of reverence in the United States, then why do you live here? He replies to this imaginary question by asking another question:
"Why do monkeys live in zoos?"
So, my fellow-Eastern Shoremen, we again find America divided by the gentle Doctor into two big classes. On the one side, Dr. Mencken; on the other side, all the rest of us—a zoo full of monkeys!
I find It impossible to get sore at such a fellow. He is really not mad with us, but is simply laughing at u-s as he laughs at the rest of the United States. Or maybe he really is possessed, as some think, of "the messianic complex" and burns to save the Shore along with the remainder of the country. Or maybe—he's only a highly-gifted poseur. What ever ne may be, the wisest thing we can do is to let him, in his own characteristic phrase, "sweat in his own suppurating juices."
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