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"Mr. Mencken is so effective just because
his appeal is not from mind to mind but from viscera to viscera. If  you analyze his arguments you destroy their effect. You cannot take them in detail and
examine their implications. You have to judge him totally, roughly, approximately, without definition, as you would a barrage of artillery, for
the general destruction rather than for the accuracy of the individual shots. He presents an experience, and if he gets you, he gets you not by
reasoned conviction, but by a conversion which you may or may not be able to dress up later as a philosophy. If he succeeds with you, he implants
in you a sense of sin, and then he revives you with grace, and disposes you to a new pride in excellence and in a non-gregarious excellence."
"Love is the triumph of
imagination over intelligence."
— H.L. Mencken
From "A
Neglected Anniversary"
Mencken commemorated the supposed introduction
of the bathtub into the United States with this article in the New York Evening Mail, Dec. 28, 1917. It was taken seriously, but of course he made
the whole thing up:
"The thing, in fact, became a public
matter, and before long there was bitter and double- headed opposition to the new invention, which had been promptly imitated by several
other wealthy Cincinnatians. On the one hand it was denounced as an epicurean and obnoxious toy from England, designed to corrupt the
democratic simplicity of the Republic, and on the other hand it was attacked by the medical faculty as dangerous to health and a certain
inviter of "phthisic, rheumatic fevers, inflammation of the lungs and the whole category of zymotic diseases."
(From the Western Medical Repository, April 23, 1843.)
"The noise of the controversy
soon reached other cities, and in more than one place medical opposition reached such strength that it was reflected  in legislation. Late in 1843, for example, the Philadelphia Common
Council considered an ordinance prohibiting bathing between November 1 and March 15, and it failed of passage by but two votes. During the
same year the legislature of Virginia laid a tax of $30 a year on all bathtubs that might be set up, and in Hartford, Providence, Charleston
and Wilmington (Del.) special and very heavy water rates were levied upon those who had them. Boston, very early in 1845, made bathing
unlawful except upon medical advice, but the ordinance was never enforced and in 1862 it was repealed."
"One seldom discovers a true
believer that is worth knowing."
— H.L. Mencken
"When we complained to the English we
didn't get no more satisfaction. Almost every day we give them plenty of warning that the politicians over there was doing things to us that they
didn't have no right to do. We kept on reminding them who we was, and what we was doing here, and how we come to come here. We asked them to get
us a square deal, and told them that if this thing kept on we'd have to do something about it and maybe they wouldn't like it. But the more we
talked, the more they didn't pay no attention to us. Therefore, if they ain't for us they must be agin us, and we are ready to give them the fight
of their lives, or to shake hands when it is over."
"There is only one justification
for having sinned, and that
is to be glad of it."
— H.L. Mencken
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