Judge, 1906-12-08 · page 16 of 16
Judge — December 8, 1906 — page 16: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a satirical comic strip about "Nervy Nat," an aristocratic character attempting rustic escapades while remaining absurdly pretentious and disconnected from reality. **The satire targets:** - Wealthy urbanites romanticizing "back to nature" while remaining oblivious and incompetent - Class anxiety: Nat mistakes a working-class woman with a hoe for a haystack, then panics she's connected to Vanderbilt wealth - American wealth and leisure: references to "trusts," chauffeurs' wages, and club dues mock nouveau riche concerns - Pretentious name-dropping (Stevenson, French affectations, gondolas) - Gender anxieties: a female companion becomes hysterical; Nat worries about her "cheap French" accent The "balloon anchor" device—they're apparently in a hot air balloon with a woman holding a hoe as anchor—embodies the strip's central joke: these people are fundamentally ridiculous and unprepared, yet utterly convinced of their own sophistication.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
1, Nexvy Nat—" Back to nature! “Tis almost as entrancing in the 2. Nervy Nat—"' Oh, mother! what's got your little son now? I won- county 6s the suburban res}-stiate agents tll us. Here | son, only a 16 der if it's one of the trusts? That settles it. Never will [ walk in the miles from Paris, and all is as it was before it became as its. Oh, joy- country again without a chaperon. Ooch! I'm getting quite giddy. My ous fragments of beatitude! Oh—— Well, you know how I feel. To brain slips about like a cake of wet soap in a soap-dish°— have one’s hind feet on good old grass and things “"— 3. Nervy Nar—*t Aha! what have we here? It looks like a haystack, 4. Nervy Nat—"' There, there, madam! calm yourself. | can’t under- yet ‘tis not— tis the lady with the hoe. Perhaps she can stop me. She stand the cheap brand of French you use. | acknowledge my mistake. | looks as if she could stop a Vanderbilt-cup race. There is something took you for a heavy woman—I was deceived. There's only one hope about her appearance that suggests Snug Harbor—a bulwark in time of for us—grab the first thing you can and hold on, And If you don't stop need "— those guttural sounds I'll drop you in the pond “"—— 5. Nervy Nat—" That's adear! Now, hold tight, Mélisande, because 6. Nexvy Nat—"* As Robert Louis Stevenson said to me, ‘It was a night if you don't we may both go on toa better world. And while you hoe of stars!" Isn't it heavenly lying back in the gondola, Henrietta, and just beautifully, and have, | doubt not, many other parlor tricks, | don't be- forgetting there are such things as club-dues and chauffeur’s wages? Ah! "d care to go to heaven in your company. Steady, now. Some- do you see—the setting sun kissing the tops of the ghost-like pyramids ? ine to vive way "— Old man, aren't you glad I let you come with me? There it ls, the North rT 1008 BY JUOGE COMPANY PUBLENERS Bes FOURTH AVE. MEW YORK Pole. See it sticking up over the Boston state-house."” NERVY NAT AND THE BALLOON ANCHOR, comicbooks.com