Sage is dead; his words live on (H.L. Mencken died 50 years ago today)

Baltimore Sun ^ | 1/28/06 | Frederick Rasmussen

[Borges]

After drinking two mild Gibson cocktails and enjoying a crackling fire and the lively conversation, Mencken again complained of not feeling well, and before going upstairs to his third-floor back bedroom, again spoke to Cheslock.

"Louis, this is the last time you'll see me," he said to his old friend, Rodgers wrote.

At 9:15 p.m., Cheslock left the Hollins Street residence and drove home through a gathering sleet storm.

Mencken climbed into bed, turned on the radio, and fell asleep listening to a Mozart concert.

Early Sunday morning, when Rancho Brown, a Johns Hopkins Hospital orderly, arrived to help get Mencken bathed and dressed, he was unable to awaken him.

His physician reckoned that Mencken had died in the wee hours of Jan. 29, 1956.

[elkfersupper]

"The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all, it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality." – H L. Mencken

[elkfersupper]

Only one more, I promise.

"The only good bureaucrat is one with a pistol at his head. Put it in his hand and it's good-by to the Bill of Rights." – H.L. Mencken

[perfect stranger]

ping

[perfect stranger]

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