This is taken from Souvenir Book, St. Paul Police Benevolent Association, 1919, a 1919 publication.

Laurence Hodgson
(Larry Ho)
Mayor of St. Paul

From the Editor and Publisher, New York, March 22, 1919,
By John Talman.

Laurence Curran Hodgson, the “Larry Ho” famous in song and gripping prose, is Mayor of St. Paul and “Man of the Hour” in Minnesota. Journalist he is by calling; poet by nature, though not of the “scatter-brain” sort; for he is a capable, adroit, energetic executive, entirely at home in State and city affairs. He helped get out the State census in 1905 and was secretary to the Speaker of the Legislature and to his two immediate predecessors in the Mayoralty.

Backed by the “middle class” and labor element, Mr. Hodgson is now reducing his humanitarian theories to practice and meanwhile starting common sense reforms in city government which everybody but politician and profiteer has always wanted and never could get.

Yet is he no whit demagogue, socialist, or self-seeker. His only aim, his heart’s master desire, is to be of service to man. Fearless in civic betterment, he is the despair and terror of the riff raff of politicians, though himself an almost eerily shrewd politician in the highest sense.

All his life has Laurence Hodgson been a lover of his kind, a powerful, dependable helper, a chronic "booster," with all the poet’s impulsive, lavish generosity. He “gives of himself” and all of himself. By the law of Karma, he was, almost without lifting a finger, “boosted” into the Mayor’s chair last May with a record vote and majority. The birds are twittering that he will be “boosted” into the Governorship next year. Country newspaper editors of all parties, as it looks now, will see to this. As a quondam co-worker says: “It is a plain case of poet, orator and lifelong preacher and consistent exemplar of the gospel of love and real brotherhood coming into his own and bringing the people with him.”

Never a “knocker,” still this man can, as some have learned to their sorrow, “roast” virulently when Justice cries aloud. His fealty to the lofty ideals governing his life seems unshakable. Not long ago he spoke at the funeral of a poor, ragged, friendless old fellow, one sub-zero night, in the service of a local charity, contracted pneumonia, in trundling a wheelbarrow load of supplies to a destitute family. And the Mayor’s address was a new sermon on the Mount.

In a recent private letter Mr. Hodgson used the following words, which he little imagined would ever meet the eye of anyone but the recipient’s:

“Most sincerely I do hope that in my blundering way through life I may in a small measure defend the dignity of common men and prove of some sustaining power to the suffering souls I meet. When I die I hope no living man will ever feel that I was not his brother. The one reward life has brought me is the earnest love of a few men who felt that I honestly loved them. I have small faith in any man’s religion if he feels above those who are unfortunate.”

No man in the North Star State approaches “Larry” in popularity. He is incapable of hate; much less of mean little grudges. All admire him, all love him. Pure that soul as the fluttering snowflake, spotless that life page as the lily drenched in April rains.

Twenty-five years ago Mr. Hodgson began newspaper work as a reporter on the old Minneapolis Times. As to the origin of his singular pen name: he had written his first signed “feature.” While affixing the signature “Larry Hodgson” the pencil broke at the first “o.” The city editor, James Gray, chanced to be looking on and suggested: “Better let it go at that—’Larry ho.’” Gray was afterward Mayor of Minneapolis and Democratic nominee for Governor of Minnesota.

For a decade or more Mr. Hodgson served, one after the other, all the St. Paul dailies in the various capacities of reporter, feature writer, book reviewer, editorial writer, sporting editor and fashioner of the sparkling “Cabbages and Kings” column which ran daily on the back page of the Dispatch. He was the Northwest’s highest baseball authority and every daily in the American League territory carried his tabulated “averages.”

“Larry” talks as well as he writes. For years and years he has been in demand at journalistic, fraternity, patriotic and social gatherings everywhere in Minnesota.

The extent of his reading and the power of his memory are amazing. He can quote pages from practically every worth-while author, living or dead.

But it is as a poet, both in rhyme and prose, that the fame of Laurence Hodgson is widest and perhaps the most securely founded, no matter where his multiform activities as an ethical reformer may land him eventually. For many years translations of his uplifting verse have had place in the school textbooks of Armenia. His sublime tribute to the American flag, written for the 1918 Memorial Day, has circulated (in pamphlet form) in the United States and abroad to the extent of over 700,000 copies and is in growing demand. He contributed a poem to this year’s Lincoln Birthday observance in the St, Paul Auditorium, which critics say equals, if it does not eclipse, the familiar tributes of Powell, Whitman, R. H. Stoddard, Stedman, and Markham.

“Larry Ho” is forty-four years old. His eyes and mouth wear a smile that never “comes off.” Not long since a leading newspaper in Kansas City had a picture of that mouth alongside of Lincoln’s with a text comparing the  traits indicated.