Baltimore Blues

Of all escape mechanisms, death is the most efficient.

– H.L. Mencken, A Book of Burlesques

[W]hile I love the dear old City of Baltimore much, and many of her people more, past experience has taught that, in their collective or municipal capacity, they are the most silly, unreflective, procrastinating, impracticable and perverse congregation of bipeds to be found any where under the sun. Wise in their own conceits they are impatient of advice, no matter how thoughtful and well matured, from any one, preferring always their own crude extemporaneous conjectures to the suggestions of sound common sense, which can only be elicited by the patient exercise of judgment, observation and reflection.

– Dr. Thomas Hepburn Buckler of Baltimore, in a letter home from his self-imposed exile in Paris, published in " Baltimore: Its Interests-Past, Present, and Future," 1873

And down in lovely muck I've lain,

Happy till I woke again.

Then I saw the morning sky:

Heighho, the tale was all a lie;

The world, it was the old world yet,

I was I, my things were wet,

And nothing now remained to do

But begin the game anew.

– A. E. Housman

"Terence, This is Stupid Stuff"