... And the Courier-Journal came out with the dread word: “The staid old Baltimore Sun has got itself a whangdoodle. Nor is this one of those bogus whangdoodles which we sometimes encounter in the side-show business, merely a double cross between a ginricky and a gyascutis—but genuine, guaranteed; imported direct from the mountains of Hepsidam. And to give facts to the above remark it quotes the immortal lines:

“The Whangdoodle, the Ginrickey
    and the Gyascutis,
Are of imagination all compact.
One sees more devils than vast hell
    can hold—
That is the Whangdoodle.”

    This mystifies the Sun paper. It laborously inquires, “What is a Whingdoodle?” It says, “We have heard of sharks, mugwumps, bohemoths, protozoan, heptasophs and steptococoi, but the whangdoodle is a bird that has yet to fly between us and the sun.” It then goes into the etymology business. It finds that the veb “whang” means to “give out a banging noise,” and that “doodle signifies “to drone like a bag pipe.”
    We desire to add what light we can to this dark subject. The whangdoodle is not — bird at all. It is a mammal, with all the affection of the mammalia for its offspring. That banging, droning noise is the articulate voice of bereavement. It inhabits the place of buried hopes and shattered dreams. Some of its progeny was evidently left to it, but is was true to the memory of its oldest and best-beloved. We are surprised at our contemporaries for making light of its sorrows. Have they never read the classic lines,

“Gone where the wood-bine twineth,
And the whangdoodle weepeth for
    its first born.”

    The fact is that both our esteemed contemporaries are trying to create a diversion. They are both so thoroughly committed to the Bryan movement that the little reference to government ownership had to be met by distracting public attention for a moment. But they might have been at better business than mocking the grief of the poor old whangdoodle. Are there not other conclusions? Has the terrapin proved less luscious than usual? Has the mint julep lost its savor?—Atlanta Journal.

From— The Ocala Banner. (Ocala, Marion County, Fla.), 21 Sept. 1906. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.