Judge, 1906-12-01 · page 16 of 16
Judge — December 1, 1906 — page 16: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a six-panel comic strip satirizing a wealthy American tourist ("Nervy Nat") who rents a speedboat on the Seine River in Paris. The humor centers on Nat's combination of arrogance and incompetence: he boasts about single-handedly making sports fashionable through his patronage, then immediately proves unable to operate the boat's steering mechanism. The satire targets upper-class American pretension and the stereotype of wealthy Americans abroad as bumbling dilettantes. Nat's companion Caduc (likely French, given the name) becomes inadvertently caught in the chaos as the uncontrollable boat heads toward disaster. The joke culminates in Nat's absurd concern about a club fine rather than the impending crash—mocking his misplaced priorities. The references to Paris locations (the Seine, Belle Parisienne) and French characters ground this in early 20th-century American attitudes toward European tourism.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
1. Nervy Nat—" Now, isn t this the cute little benzine-scow? Me for a swish down the Seine at forty-five miles an hour. ‘There are very few sports | haven't made fashionable by personally indulging in them. 1 should be pained to see motor-boating die out just for the lack of my patronage.” 2. Nervy Nat—" Say! this is going some. I have a sort of tip-toeing. tennis-shoeing suspicion that this craft was built for speed. By the sacred squid! | can t move the steering thingmagig. The only thing | have on me they can identify me with after all is over isa notification from my club that | have been posted for two francs, eighty centimes ‘—— 4. Sercent Capuc—-"* Sacré fin du monde! It is that | am holding on, but I also am coming—yes!”” 3. Nervy Nat—" Caduc, my cear, delightful friena, cnuck us tnat rope, for the love of old times, and dont let go the other end! | can promise you, old cnap, there Il be a bigger strain on you than all your wife's rela~ Nervy. Nat—"' Well, who the—did | say anything about coming? tions ever were. If you don’t stop me there will be a rent in the landscape You stay where you are and hold tight. Never knew such a man—can't where I'm headed for "— seem to keep his place 6. Nervy Nat—"" Don't say tt, Caduc—don't! I see it on your face th you are about to make that remark,’ You are arrest!’ But refrain. Re member how miraculously you have escaped going to that region wher 5. Nervy Nat—"' Cadue, you homard! now is the time for your past life to biograph across the sheet of what you are pleased to term your mind— because we are about eighty seconds this side of a violent demise. ‘La Belle Parisienne.’ with the stubbornness of her sex, is headed for that the wicked cease from bubbling and there are no more arrests. Let © wharf. Caduc. farewell "—— hike to the nearest alcoholic temple and drink our own healths. sSorreie se e+ aeons comer eemnnens om fever me. ner went” ~NERVY: NAT RUNS A, MOTOR-BOAT ON ‘THE. SEINE Norn. — The Hirst Series of Nervy Nat's Adv m und, in bookform. Price, 75 cents ¢ £0 cents a comicbooks.com