Judge — December 7, 1907 — page 9: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

ADIES and gentlemen, parents, politicians and plutocrats: The duty of good cheer is equally binding on the conscience at all seasons of the year ; but to answer to the demands of the Christmas season there must be an added grace of joy bom of the spontaneous delight of unbribed af- fection. This old earth is now going on two hundred.and seventy-six quadrillion years of age. During some part of that time—some say ten million years or so— we humans have been here. _ It’s been a long sojourn, with many intervals of wretchedness. But we have lived through it and here we are, anchored out some- where in the trackless wilds of infinite space. We think there is something pretty solid under us, but that is an illusion. There is nothing above nor beneath nor around us but space piled on space and that on oceans of empti- ness. We don't know where we started, which way we are going, nor where lies our journey’s end, Part of the year we float in atmospheres of balm, and strange beauties spring into multitudinous life all about us, The vernal entrance and autumnal exits of this mystic zone we call Spring and Fall, but that is not because we understand either the one or the other in the least. For another term each year we run through chilled stretches of space and our revolving sphere accumulates some six hundred styles of frapped climates which we name Winter. And in the very midst of this cold-storage arc of the solar circuit comes the Christmas time. Now, note this argument: By some ingenuity of the heart, some blessed aptitude of grace, our benighted for- JUDGE'S TWENTY-SEVENTH CHRISTMAS ADDRESS FROM THE BENCH bears seized upon precisely this most inauspicious season of the year in which to fling a joyful defiance at all the unexplainable and inescapable hardships of the world, and to declare their pleasure in the face of its most fractious and unsmiling moods. The question then is: Have we any cause in our day for harboring a grouch when those of earlier and rougher times could see so much warrant for happiness? The scientists tell us that there is an upper brain which thinks and a lower brain which acts. They say that when the upper brain is thinking in a happy mood it distills a stimulating elixir that flows down on the acting lower brain and fills it with a vivid and vigorous delight. But when the upper brain is grouchy, distorted in thought and dismal of mood, it sprays the lower brain | with an acidulous vapor that turns the acting brain sour | and perverts its every function. Out of the heart pro- ceed the issues of life and the mood determines the work. Folks! Get rid of your sour brains. Sweeten up your intellectuals and get on good terms with life. Even though you have millions and are hated of some editors | and pursued by federal prosecutors, sweeten up. Though | you live in a flat, perk up and be cheerful as you can. When nobody loves you, love somebody. That is, love { everybody that-it is lawful for you to-love. Think what poor, lonely, enigmatical derelicts you are and how every- body else is in the same boat. Then get kind. Sugar. —even trust sugar—is cheaper than any acid. It's cheaper than vinegar, With these few remarks JUDGE invites his readers to pass to the next page and the next, and so on to the end, finding what entertainment they may as they go, | and meanwhile, good sirs and ladies all, a mery | Christmas to you and a happy New Year. comicbooks.com