Judge, 1888 · page 5 of 72
Judge — 1888 — page 5: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains two distinct pieces of satire: **Top Editorial ("Natural Gas"):** An essay praising authentic, spontaneous wit over manufactured humor—comparing genuine laughter to natural wind rather than artificially produced "gas" (slang for empty talk). Judge celebrates unscripted humor as superior to the calculated comedic productions found in rival publications. **Bottom Cartoon ("At a Harvard Assembly"):** A social comedy playing on miscommunication. A Harvard student (Ellicott, class of '89) warns Miss Laker, a visiting woman from Duluth, that their approaching dance partner is the university's "pet quarter-back" (star football player). Miss Laker—unfamiliar with American football—misunderstands, thinking he's describing the man's physical anatomy as only "a quarter" of something lengthy. Her innocent misinterpretation creates the joke, satirizing the cultural gap between Midwestern visitors and East Coast college society.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
a FROM FUDCE. ye IT is better to have the natural than the pumped and manufactured article. That good wit that surprises one and brings light to his eyes and laughter to his lips and countenance, unexpected and unstudied, is better than the machine-produced light and lightness that prevail in so many publications. “Why do you whistle so?” asked the spec- ulative man of the thoughtless boy with his lips always puckered and his cheeks always blown. ‘Don't whistle!” said the boy, unscrewing his lips; ‘‘whistles itself." The winds they blow where they list, and nobody knows the destination of any thistledown; natural and other gas lifts itself to the match and there is consolation in it, if not glory and cor- uscation; and when they are gone there is nothing to show that they have been there, as there is nothing left of a laugh but the memory of it a few times during a long or a short life. But all the same they have had their mission and done their little work; and the Judge's compliments and good wishes to such as think that “NaturaL Gas” is equally fortunate. AT A HARVARD ASSEMBLY. ELLIcoTT, '89—** Don't look now, Miss Laker; but here comes our pet quarter-back.” A Miss LAKER (of Duluth, who never played football, and thinks her partner ts referring to the approaching lady)—‘ If that’s only a quarter of it she must have an awfully long back, Mr. Ellicott.” comicbooks.com