Judge, 1889-08-17 · page 3 of 16
Judge — August 17, 1889 — page 3: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# "The Hidden Orchestra" & "An Aggravating Assistant" This page contains two humorous illustrated stories from Judge magazine (a satirical weekly). **"The Hidden Orchestra"** is a whimsical poem about a hidden musician who plays violin beneath a stone while watching a pretty Baltimore girl named Marjorie enjoy the beach. The joke builds as natural sounds (waves, animals) seem to accompany her movements like orchestral music—until the reveal: a fiddler crab causes her to shriek, breaking the romantic illusion. **"An Aggravating Assistant"** shows a man (Moseby) attempting to photograph himself using an early camera setup. The humor derives from the failure of early self-photography technology: just as he's positioned everything, a playful puppy tangles with the camera's snap-cord, ruining the exposure. Both pieces satirize romantic pretension and technological mishaps—common Judge themes. The cartoons rely on observational humor about everyday frustrations rather than political commentary, reflecting the magazine's dual nature as both satirical and entertainment-focused.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
THE HIDDEN ORCHESTRA. ‘The prettiest one on the beach that morn ‘as Marjorie—far and awa ‘The rarest of birds in this land of ours, A Kaltimore girl with cheeks like flowers, And hair as bright as ‘Then T took my bow and I played a waltz In my jolliest, wildest vein, As I crouched beneath the friendly stone Where I held my vantage all alone, With a hope that a glance she'd deign. JUDGE 299 I watched her while she tossed the spray, And flung her white arms about ; And my cyes popped out of my head in glee Mt the love with which she wooed the sea In her tumbles in and out. I know not just how it came about, But, with sudden shriek and grab At the nearest mermaid standing by, ay like a dragon-fly ils! there’s a fiddler-crab !* AN AGGRAVATING ASSISTANT. Just then the puppy began a game of tag with the snap-cord, and this was the result of the exposure, Moseby had arranged the camera to take his own portrait, but— comicbooks.com