Judge, 1903-12-19 · page 12 of 52
Judge — December 19, 1903 — page 12: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains six humorous short stories with illustrations, typical of Judge's early-20th-century satirical format: **"His Rash Break"**: A young man proposes to his girlfriend by saying he wants her in his Christmas stocking. She's furious, interpreting this as an insulting comment about her feet—he's made a social blunder. **"Making Home Happier"**: A father gives his newlywed son a "matrimonial cellarette"—a Kansas-style cyclone shelter designed as a humorous refuge when his wife argues or complains about visiting her mother. The joke: the bride immediately repurposes it as a sewing basket. **Other vignettes** humorously address Christmas inconveniences: children disappointed by sparse celebrations, a Sunday school superintendent's Christmas service delayed because a doctor (playing Santa) insisted on pasteurizing and sterilizing all toys with boiling water and formaldehyde (reflecting early-20th-century germ-theory anxieties). The humor relies on domestic situations, class distinctions, and period anxieties about modern sanitation—all accessible to Judge's contemporary readers but requiring historical context for modern audiences.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
HIS RASH BREAK. oe HAT would you like to find in your stockings, Henry ?" asked the coy young thing. Henry fidgeted for a mo- ment, then thought that now or never was the time for him * to learn his fate. “You !" he sighed. 1c?" she echoed wrath- fully, “Henry Longworthy Spuddicratt, I wish you distinet- ly to understand that noone can call on me as long as you have | and receive the hospitality of my home as you have, and then re- ad pay my kindness by insinuating such things about my feet Henry had put his foot in it. | CHRISTMAS. ] 1 The season's perplexities sweet | “Talk about yer yooltides! Chris'mus-trees all (‘Are making us labor anew, “Gracious sakes! If dere ain't old Sandy Claws his- | around, but | don't 'see nc yool, ner nuthin’ else, tied on When filling the stocking, to keep self comin’ dis way. “em for Toddlin’ Teddies.” From putting our foot in it too. MAKING HOME HAPPIER. DELAYED THE SERVICES. | 44)MY son,” said the good old father, who SO YVHATS the matter?" asked the | was taking Christmas dinner with superintendent of the Sunday- the son and his bride, “I have brought school as he entered the assembly room. | you a present that should help you to enjoy “I supposed the Christmas-tree would be life. Of course 1 know that right now almost. stripped of presents by this time. you young folks never expect to have any What's the hitch ?* storms or stress, but it is only human “It’s all your fault,” answered his as- nature to have differences of opinion, and sistant. “I told you it would be a mis- only woman’s nature to sometimes get em- take to get Dr. Bacillamus to play Santa ' phatic over them So I have brought you Claus, even, if he is fat.” 4 a matrimonial cellarett “A matrimonial cellarette? Why, what is chat “It is built on a model of the cyclone cellars used in Kansas, and whenever your wife begins to talk about going home to her mother, and at the same time fin- gers the rolling-pin nervously, you want to jump into this cellarette and bolt the lid. Foolish father He should not have told that before her. The glad new year saw her resolving to use the cellarette for a work-basket, 4. “Dis must be wot dey calls a surprise package.” An’ he's left me a present, sure.”* INADEQUATE FACILITIES. [Twas during one of the cold- est of the cold waves of the winter that a man from New Jersey came in and announced that his thermometer registered ten degrees below zero, “It’s colder than that where I live,” added the man from Long Island. “It was fifteen below on the thermom- eter, and it would have been colder if the thermometer had been longer.” HE HAD THEM. The Rev. Dr. Primrose— “So your father gave you money to buy him and your mother some Christmas presents. Now, what did you buy them ?* Freddie" drum, a horn, a pair of cymbals, a whistle and a lot of other things they said I couldn't have.” “ Why, what was wrong about that?” “Why, confound ‘As soon as he got here he threw up his hands in horror when he was told that the tree and pres- ents hadn't been pasteurized, and now he's got everything down in the basement, hav- ing the toys boiled and the tree sprayed with formaldehyde.” BUSINESS. Knicker—“ Were you shopping to- day?" Mrs. Knicker No, I went down town and bought all the Christmas presents.” —And it was— comicbooks.com