Judge, 1900-10-27 · page 10 of 16
Judge — October 27, 1900 — page 10: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page satirizes a common boarding-house experience through wordplay and social commentary. **Main Story:** Mrs. Brown, a garrulous English lady, complains about her previous boarding-house serving only "hashes" (chopped meat dishes) at every meal. Miss Muser initially misunderstands "hashes" as "ashes" (cremated remains), creating a darkly comic image of Mrs. Brown arising "like the fabled phoenix" from ashes. The joke reveals the low quality of cheap boarding-house food—so monotonous and unappetizing that it resembles actual garbage. **Secondary Cartoons:** - "Literal" mocks absurd misinterpretations - "Just Sew" is a children's cautionary verse about Susan's fatal needle-swallowing - "A Dangerous Fertilizer" shows a dog discovering bones buried as plum-tree fertilizer The satire targets the grim reality of budget boarding-house life in America, where poor food quality was apparently endemic and unremarkable.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
THE MYSTERY OF THE ASHES. RS. BROWN is a somewhat garrulous English lady who lives at Mrs. Lodge- well’s boarding- house, which is not a hundred miles from New York. Born within hearing of the sound of Bow Bells, she is as h-less a creature as ever emanated from that proverbially h-less district. On the first evening of Miss Muser’s arrival at Mrs. Lodgewell’s she was startled at receiving from Mrs. Brown the following astonishing confidences. They were seated at dinner -and Miss Muser had politely proffered the lady the Worcestershire sauce, which she rejected, saying, , thank you; I don’t like it except in ‘ashes ! “ Ah!” ejaculated Miss Muser, “ ashes ?” “Yes; and, speaking of ‘ashes, I ‘ad such an experience in my last boarding-‘ouse and was worn quite to a shadow when I came ‘ere. They gave us nothing but ‘ashes to eat! There was ‘ash for break fast, ‘ash for luncheon, ‘ash for dinner. Always ‘ashes! Wasn't it dreadful?” HOW IT HAPP LITERAL. ‘Tue ostnict —* What on earth are you people doing with all those dippers and things?" ‘Oh, the hippo has just been arrested for intoxication and we're going to bail him out.” sold ten gold.bricks in one day last week.” * County fair?” No, Convention of free-silverites.” Miss Muser, with a look of horror, pronounced it positively criminal. “ But you did not eat it, did you?" ‘Ow could I ‘elp it? There was nothing else.” For a moment there lingered before the eyes of Miss Muser’s bewildered mind a fleeting vision of Mrs. Brown, like the fabled phoenix, arising from her “ashes.”* Subsequently she discovered that but for the inadequacy of the lady's h's the “ashes” in ques- tion would not have constituted amore remarkable article of diet than that which may be found with great frequency on the bill- of-fare of every second - rate boarding-house. JUST SEW! ITTLE Susan would not sew, In spite of spank or wheedle, And one day in a naughty mood ‘She swallowed thread and needle, The needle in her lung did lodge, The thread caught in her side, And Susan ** hemmed” and had a “stitch” Until she ** up and died.” Amateur—"* I will just bury these bones about the roots of this rare plum-tree. They will be the finest of fertilizer for it.” ar A DANGEROUS FERTILIZ First stray (excavating vigorously) —" Say, Carlo, this is a regular bone-mine !" —- comicbooks.com