The more things change..............

     Even so, he had discovered the power of words and was hungry for more.  Mencken was still an eight-year-old and found himself at home in need of something to read.  He tried the Baltimore newspapers, but they had too many "political diatribes," and he knew "no more about politics than a chimpanzee." ... In despair, Mencken resorted the the row of books atop the secretary, "dismal volumes in the black cloth and gilt stamping of the era."  His father had collected these but seldom read them since the elder Mencken was given to news stories on the condition of the country and the world, both of which he thought were "going to Hell."

-D. G. Hart, Damning Words, the life and religious times of H. L. Mencken

Ed. Note:  The year was 1888