Judge, 1902-12-20 · page 14 of 52
Judge — December 20, 1902 — page 14: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page collects several short humorous pieces satirizing American middle-class life around Christmas: **"The Optimistic Gunner"** mocks a hunter so incompetent he can't identify birds by sound, yet confidently fires blindly—the joke being his overconfidence despite obvious ignorance. **"An Allegorical Painting"** satirizes pretentious art criticism: a friend claims an artist paints "impossible things," but his masterpiece is merely a man smoking a cheap Christmas novelty pipe—exposing how critics inflate mediocrity into profundity. **"No Cr. with This Dr."** jokes about doctors' greed: a physician charges $10 merely to feel a child's pulse after swallowing a whistle, suggesting medical practitioners exploit parental worry. **Other brief pieces** mock Christmas excess and domestic absurdities: a professor gift-wrapping simplified children's books as "classics," a drunk husband avoiding home because double-vision makes his wife appear duplicated, and a wife obsessed with retrieving two cents change. The satire targets pretension, commercialism, and the anxieties of aspiring middle-class Americans during the Christmas season.
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Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
THE OPTIMISTIC GUNNER. [ HEAR some merry minstrel whizz, And whizz and whizz away, And really what kind it is, Is more than I can say. Perhaps it is a bobolink, Perhaps it is a quail, Perhaps it is a blithe chewink, Perhaps it is a rail. But soon I certainly shall know The bird I cannot see, Because V'll let both bar- rels go Bang, bang, and ine stantelee Ifas a hunter T amount To what's A number ene, I may upon the minstrel count Before I fire the gun. So when the bird no more can fly, Though ortolan or not, T'll bet he'll gayly gild the pie Whose foremost name is pot. AN ALLEGORICAL PAINTING. 60 YOUR friend Kullers is an artist. What school ?" “Why, he’s a sort of impressionist, or rather, he paints these pictures of impossible things.” “Oh, yes. Fairies and gods and goddesses, and all that.” “Well, sometimes ; but his last picture is not ex- actly like that, yet it is the most wonderful thing you ever saw.” “What is it?" “It represents a man sitting down and smoking.” “Humph! Nothing odd about that.” “But the man is using one of these Christmas presentation smoking-sets.” NO CR. WITH THIS DR. *4]5 YOUR doctor a business-like practitioner ?” “Is he? Why, my little boy swallowed a five- HER ADAM. cent Christmas whistle, and the doctor got ten dollars Gtaprs—"* So he pro out of me before he would feel the boy's pulse.” Peneore—" Yes. Hi to you the night before Christmas ?” ked me to be his Christmas Eve." IN BOSTON. ‘¢THIS,” said Mrs, Brownbean, holding an edition de luxe to the light, “is the gift of Professor Highbrough to our little son Emerson.” h,” comments the caller; * is it 4 volume of the classics “No. Emerson has not yet left the primary grades. This is a book of stories suitable for chil- dren, told in words of five and six syllables.” ONE WAS ENOUGH. $4 JAMES,” said the critical wife on Christmas eve," I should like to know why it is that you never come home when you are drinking, but always remain down town until you have sobered up.” “Because,” said the heartless husband, “I al- ways see double, and I do not like to think of you as a BA NW 3. Stat Diss: f THE CHRISTMAS CRUSH. m ONY, r H = 4 Westervelt (desperately) —*' Tell the clerk she may keep the two cents change when it come: His wife (resignedly)—" She says she can't wait for it! She has to go to lunch in an hour.” Mrs. Benham—* The baby is asleep.” A CHRISTMAS SCARE. Benham—* Well, don't wake him up thinking Para Bun—" Growl, children, and he'll think it's an ice bear for sure." about it.” comicbooks.com