Word: menckenism
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Frank taught Mencken how to bite enemies in what Mencken calls the "caboose." Then Frank nearly blew up after trying to eat ten bushels of oats, and young Mencken joined the Y.M.C.A. There he learned to distrust "Christian endeavor in all its forms" and moved hastily on to Baltimore Polytechnic. The Polytechnic taught him 1) that philanthropy was "a purely imaginary quantity, like demi-virginity or one glass of beer," and 2) that the eager curiosity of growing boys was not to be satisfied by anatomy classes in which "all the abdomen south of the umbilicus was represented...
There are many other scenes from Mencken's long journalistic career, including a Cuban revolutionary bit which is a thumbnail classic on Latin American politics. Mencken has heard all the great U.S. exhorters, from William Jennings Bryan on, and it is his considered opinion that none was "worthy of being put in the same species, or even in the same genus, as Gerald L. K. Smith ... a boob-bumper worth going miles to see and hear." Mencken heard Smith speak on the same platform with Father Coughlin and win hands down, despite his opponent's "habit of enforcing...
Trips to the Mediterranean served only to reinforce Mencken's native temper. At the Vatican he inserted himself among the pilgrims and impudently kissed the apostolic ring of Pius X. Jerusalem he deplored for its "crude pottery of the thunder-mug species." The Holy Sepulcher he found obviously "bogus ... for unless Joseph of Arimathea was a reincarnation of Samson no one could imagine him rolling a stone large enough to close it." Mencken was full of sympathy for the British soldier who "spoke in favorable terms of the destruction of [Jerusalem] by the Romans in the year...
...Prohibition that brought Mencken perhaps his richest experiences and inspired perhaps his most uplifting prose. One day he went with Publisher Alfred Knopf to hear the Bach Choir at Bethlehem, Pa., and "our tonsils became so parched that we could barely join in the final Amen." Rushing frenziedly to a strange speakeasy, they found themselves without a card of introduction. Mencken did not hesitate. Before the eye at the peephole he held his music score. The eye read...
Concludes Mencken: "The eye flicked for an instant or two, and then the mouth spoke. 'Come in, gents,' it said...