Judge, 1911-11-04 · page 7 of 24
Judge — November 4, 1911 — page 7: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a humorous advice column titled "Now Is the Time" offering tongue-in-cheek pre-Christmas suggestions for wives and fiancées. The cartoon at top depicts a domestic scene: a husband complains that his wife, now married, constantly nags him—contrasting with how he called her "an angel" before marriage. The satire mocks the gap between courtship romance and marital reality. The column itself playfully catalogs holiday tasks and social obligations: embroidering gifts, cultivating indifference toward multiple romantic interests from summer, managing multiple "fiancés," currying favor with wealthy relatives for Christmas money, and enduring discomfort (cold radiators, poor heating) while remaining gracious to service workers. The brief poem at bottom ("Mary Has a Little Lamb") appears unrelated—likely advertising or filler—protesting some congressional trade schedule issue. The satire targets early 20th-century upper-middle-class domesticity and the financial pressures underlying holiday season social performance.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
O BEGIN embroidering those red floss slippers you are going to make for the minister’s Christmas. To start those afghan ear- tabs you have designed for the Christ- mas surprise of your favorite fiance. To begin to worry over the question why, after having successfully rid your- self of 1,893,543 freckles, that bright, particular sun speck on the end of your nose won't come off. To cultivate a stony stare with which to greet, when you chance to meet them upon the high- way, the dozen or more fiances of your summer campaign, who seem to think In- dian Summer perpetuates the privileges of the \4 earlier period. To hang your furs out upon a line in the back yard, where the “AND I STILL DO, NOW “BEPORE WE MARRIED, YOU CALLED ME AN ANGEL.” ARE YOU NOT CONTINUALLY HARPING?” autumn breezes will blow steadily through them, thus enabling you to wear them in public without making people think that you are either a garage or a drug store in disguise. To be particularly assiduous in your attentions to your crabbed old uncle or your rich but somewhat lemony maiden aunt, from whom you expect to have ex- pectations along about the twenty-fifth of December. To find out just how much more ready cash than he has got your son, who is a freshman at college, is spending on col- lars, shirts, pink neckties, lavender socks, patent-leather pumps, mackin- toshes, and other unnecessary necessi- ties of a university career. To begin to put down upon paper an itemized list of the blessings of life for which it will behoove you to render thanks when ‘‘the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock.’’ To get out your last year’s Christmas presents that have lain in the attic since the beginning of the year and decide which ones among them are suitable for this year’s campaign, and carefully note IS THE TIME: whence they have come, lest you return unto some donor a last year’s reminder of himself. To smile kindly upon the janitor, who holds the keys to your radiator; the plumber, who may shortly be called upon to pipe a metry lay or lay a merry pipe on your behalf; and the coal man, of whose stores of sparkling jewels you may ere long desire to partake, holding out, the while, a frosty hand to the man of ice. To eschew darning your luck and to devote an equal amount of time to the important task of darning those inner garments which, while they serve silently and without show, are needed to keep your stores of animal heat from dissipat- ing themselves upon the ambiency of your atmospheric environment. Horace Dodd Gastit. A Protest. ARY has a little lamb, Whose fleece is bright and gay; But 'twon’t be worth a tinker’s cuss If Congress doesn’t hurry up and set- tle this monkey-business in respect to Schedule K. comicbooks.com