Judge, 1887-12 · page 8 of 45
Judge — December 1887 — page 8: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page from *Judge* (a late-19th-century American satirical magazine) collects holiday-themed humorous observations and cartoons: **Content includes:** - **"Raisins," "Plums," and other brief witticisms** about Christmas behavior—cynical observations on children's gift-giving, old maids, and parental hypocrisy (parents relieved when school resumes). - **"Christmas at Steufelbecker's"** cartoon: depicts a working-class family's modest holiday, with German-accented dialect humor (common for period ethnic comedy). - **"Mistake in His Creation"**: mocks Robert Garrett, apparently a wealthy telegraph magnate who accumulated 100+ pairs of trousers—satirizing nouveau-riche excess and suggesting he'd be happier as a centipede (more legs = more pants). - **"Christmas Propriety"**: dark humor about disabled men receiving inappropriate gifts (wooden-legged man with skates; armless man with gloves). - **"Reassured"**: social satire on a vain young woman's false modesty about piano-playing, with the host's reassurance that nobody will listen anyway. The satire targets class pretension, sentimentality, and social hypocrisy.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
6 RAISINS. You can’t tell how good a boy is by the number of things in his stocking. The bright boy can't see what he is going to get by sleeping with one eye open. The small boy soon gets the hang of the Christmas stocking. Ifa girl eats enough mince pie, she will dream of her future husband. The best thing in the stocking is always down in the toe. The pie the small boy steals often makes him sick. The man with the gout is rather heavily handicapped. The naughty boy gets his Christmas box baintin’ in Eurobe. on the ear. CHRISTMAS AT STEUFELBECKER'S. *Peesness vos a little dull, hut dem cheeltren is loocky to hef a fader dot learns fresgo- MISTAKE IN HIS CREATION. Robert Garrett is a comparatively young man, but has accumu- lated over one hundred pairs of trousers. How happy he would have been if he had been born a centi- pede, instead of a Napoleon of telegraphy. CHRISTMAS PROPRIETY. When the wooden-legged man gota pair of skates he was mad; but what was his anger in comparison with that of the man without arms who got a pair of gloves? REASSURED. Host ‘persuasively)—“ Miss Elegant, won't you kindly gratify the company with one of your latest selections on the piano? They admire your style 50 much. Basnrut Younc Lapy—*O! Mr. Goodfellow—I'm such a bashful thing—I can never play well when anybody is listening.” Host (assuringly) —** Oh, don't let that worry you ; nobody will listen, I'm sure. PLUMS. One little boy often gives another the measles. The old maid never gets under the mistle- toe by mistake—she gets there intention- ally. ‘The fond parent who is overjoyed when his son comes home to spend the holidays, is generally glad when school begins again. Some people make presents in the hope of getting something more valuable in return, Christmas is to the human heart as bar- ber’s lather is to a man’s neck. There is the tender approach, the coy dalliance, and the final spread-over of affection and universal fluidity. They didn’t pay the slightest attention to your last, I know.” comicbooks.com