Professor H L Mencken

The Free Lance, January-April 1913 Professor H L Mencken

As he approached his second full year of writing "The Free Lance" for the Baltimore Evening Sun, H. L. Mencken continued to expatiate on an array of topics in the realms of politics, society, and culture. He advocates the liberalization of laws against prostitution; he defends the mispronunciation of foreign words as a feature of the "American language"; he condemns the quackery associated with such movements as Christian Science and the "New Thought"; he continues to argue in support of woman suffrage; he rails against attempts to ban alcohol, cigarettes, and other products, and attacks moral crusaders generally. Elsewhere, he broaches other subjects, as in his grim description of the hanging of an African American felon, as well as a forceful assertion of the citizen's right to defy unjust and immoral laws. Throughout, Mencken displays the perspicacity, pungency, and irreverence that made him the most celebrated journalist of his era.