Judge, 1911-10-28 · page 15 of 24
Judge — October 28, 1911 — page 15: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page presents a fictional short story by Wilbur Daniel Steele, not a political cartoon. The top shows character sketches labeled "The Pursuit of Happiness" (Mother, Father, Brother, Uncle Wally, Sister, Little Arthur) and an illustration captioned "Taking on a Pilot." The story itself is a tall tale in rural American dialect about Sam Judson's extraordinary trout. A man relates how Sam caught a large trout, kept it in a water trough, and through repeated exposure to air, the fish gradually adapted to live completely out of water. It even developed flipper-like fins and followed Sam around like a pet dog. The story notes that news of this marvel spread so widely that a Washington institution (implied as scientific/governmental) sent someone to investigate. The humor relies on the absurdity of the premise and authentic rural vernacular speech patterns popular in early 20th-century American humor magazines.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Ne scar res . Mother. . Uncle Wally. Sister. Little Arthur. THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS. A FISH STORY. By WILBUR DANIEL STEELE ‘T WAS a very small town and an almost negligible sta- got knocked over by accident, an’ Sam didn’t know it fer tion, and 1 was doomed to a three hours’ wait between quite a spell. When he did hear abaout it, he give the fish trains. My vigil was shared by a rather lanky citizen, whose chief purpose in life seemed to be the pinning to earth of a restless crack- er box and the Fletcher- izationof vastquantities of straw. He finally grew communicative. “So ye're f'm Wash- in’ton,’’ he mused. “Waal, waal, there was a feller f’m your taown up here one time—sci- entific chap—come all the way jest to see Sam Judson’s fish. Ye ain’t never heard abaout the critter, hev ye? Daw- gondest queer thing ever happened in this taown- sh’p! “Sam was fishin’ up- river one day an’ he pulled aout this here big trout—Geerusalem! but he was a stem-winder! Waal, what does Sam dew but fetch ’im home an’ put ’im in the water- ‘n’ trough, jest to show his neighbors thet they’d been misjudgin’ him fer the last twenty year when he told ’em what kinda fish he caught. Trout got along fine an’ Sam was tickled to death, “One day the trough TAKING ON up fer lost; but, come to find aout, the durn animile hadn't come by no harm at all. Sam is acurious man, Next day he took the trout aout an’ left it longer’n it'd been the day before. Critter seemed to like it. Day after, same thing, an’ the day after that. Before he got through, thet there fish was liv- in’ completely an’ en- tirely aout of the water all the time. “Sam got to love that fish like it was a child. Its front fins grew aout some, like flippers, an’ it was funnier’n heck to see it follerin’ Sam around the yard when he wasdewin’ thechores. Sam called it ‘Abra- ham,’ after an uncle of his thet was goin’ to die purty quick, an’ it would come waddlin’ aout to meet 'im every time he opened the front gate. “Waal, I "low abaout every humin bein’ in this section of the State come tew see thet fish, one timer nother. News of it must've scattered purty dern fur, because, for long, up comes a let- ter f’m some institew- tion in Washin’ton, thet comicbooks.com