Judge, 1898-12-24 · page 21 of 30
Judge — December 24, 1898 — page 21: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains three separate satirical pieces: **"No Need for Santa Claus"** (top cartoon): A saloon scene where a rough cowboy ("Bugjuice Bill") offers drinks to other cowboys, sarcastically suggesting they don't need Santa since they can get drunk themselves. The satire targets working-class excess and frontier rowdiness. **"A Horrible Ordeal"** (text story): A traveling salesman dreads Christmas because he expects to receive neckties from multiple women—revealed to be his wives in different counties. The joke satirizes bigamy and infidelity, framing receiving identical gifts as the traveler's "punishment" for his deception. **"The Carol of the Wires"** (poem with illustration): Romanticizes telegraph wires as nature's instruments, singing messages of "good wishes" between people. This celebrates the telegraph as humanity's connection to nature and each other. **"Too Cold for Removal"** (bottom): A woman declines to hang Christmas stockings due to freezing weather—mild domestic humor. The page reflects Gilded Age concerns: frontier culture, urban infidelity, technological progress, and working-class life.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
NO NEED FOR SANTA CLAUS. Bugjuice Brt—* Line up, all yer scrubby cowpunchers, an’ drink on me! We'll all git full ernuff ter fi'l our own stockin’s !' A HORRIBLE ORDEAL. ‘THE traveling man shuddered—and yet the sleeper was warm and comfortable; he turned nervously frem side to side—and yet the berth was most commodious and soft. “I would sooner,” he muttered savagely, as he slipped a certain article out from under the pillow and unscrewed the nozzle, “I would sooner blow a Spaniard off to two ten-cent drinks without selling him anything than go through next week's ordeal. But I suppose every man has his Gethseminy—whatever that may mean—Dutch for getting it up the back, I believe—and this is mine. Bah! I know just what to expect. From Jane I shall get a necktie; from Kate I shall get a necktie ; {rom Bessie I shall get a neck- tie; from Mary, Eliza, Hepsibah, Gladys, Bridget and Heliotrope I shall get neckties. There will be a necktie from Hannah and a necktie from Daisy. Louise will send her undying love and a necktie ; Flossie a necktie and a thousand kisses; Ethel will express a necktie; Edith wi'l send one by freight; Penelope's will come by registered mail" — Exhausted nature could bear no fore—the traveling man slept. Alas for the poor fel- jow! It was the week before Christmas and he was a bigamist, with a fond wife in each _ of seventeen counties and four school-districts. THE CAROL OF THE WIRES. WOULD yor listen to music entrancing, And played by invisible hands ? To a strain that sets snow-birds a-dancing, ‘As round it they circle in bands ? Linger here, by the wayside forsaken, When day in red sunset cxpires ; ‘When the keen winds of winter awaken, And list to the song of the wires. "Tis the tclegraplr harp, stretched to tuning On posts that the tall forest gave ; ‘ ‘And these answer, when wild winds are crooning, Their brothers whose branches still wave, But of nature the tree-tops are singing, : : ‘The sccrets of forest and fen ; TOO COLD FOR REMOVAL. While the wires, their swift messages winging, MAme (on Christmas eve)—" Are yer goin’ ter hang up yer stockin’s ter-night, Liz?” Chant the will and good wishes cf men, Liz (hattering)—"* Wot! Sech wedder as dis ?” WRNRY TYRRELL. comicbooks.com