Judge, 1904-01-02 · page 10 of 18
Judge — January 2, 1904 — page 10: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains two distinct satirical pieces from Judge magazine. **Top Section ("The Black Wins"):** A moral fable mocking New Year's resolutions and human judgment. Three men approach self-improvement differently—one swears off bad habits, one claims to have none, one says nothing—yet all are condemned regardless. The satire targets society's hypocrisy: people will criticize any choice you make, making genuine reform impossible. The accompanying comic strips (panels 1-6) likely illustrate these scenarios humorously. **Bottom Section ("Appropriate"):** A single-panel cartoon set in what appears to be a modest home, showing adults and children exchanging Christmas gifts. The joke turns on ironic, underwhelming presents: someone received "predigested breakfast-food" and another a "bottle of hair-tonic"—mundane, vaguely insulting gifts rather than genuine luxuries. This satirizes the gap between Christmas expectations and disappointing reality, particularly targeting commercial consumer culture and class disparities during the holiday season.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
THE BLACK WINS. FATE OF THE THREE MEN. THERE were once three men who gave a great deal of thought to the problem of what to do the first of the year. The first man announced that he had sworn off all his bad habits. And everybody said he always was a wild character, and it would be well to keep closer watch than ever on him, as now there was no tell- ing when he would cut loose worse than ever. The second man, seeking to profit by the experience of the first, declared that he had not sworn off because he had no bad habits to discard. "The result was that everybody pronounced him a hardened wretch, who was insensible and indifferent to the duties of life. The third man studied their cases, and concluded that the best thing he could do would be to say nothing whatever. Whereupon ” everybody asserted that he was too calloused to reform and was not worthy of any respect at all. This simply goes to show that, no matter how you guess, you will guess wrong. GBERTUS THE ONLY no ORIGINAL . APPROPRIATE. CIRCASSIAN LADY: ‘THE GLASS-EATER Circassian Lapy—'"* A bottle of hair-tonic.”* * What did you get for Christmas, Ed?" A case of predigested breakfast-food. What did you get, Mame?” comicbooks.com