Judge, 1913-01-11 · page 8 of 24
Judge — January 11, 1913 — page 8: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page is a humorous satirical "birthday book" compiled by "Horace Dodd Gastit, P.D.Q." (a made-up name). Rather than genuine astrology, it offers absurdist mock-predictions for January birthdays that mock various contemporary social types and situations. The humor works through exaggeration and irony: babies born on the 12th shouldn't mix pickles with milk; those on the 13th face bad luck in subways, opera boxes, or baseball bleachers; the poor earning twelve dollars weekly should fear con-men selling expensive motor cars on installment plans. Later entries target specific professions (streetcar conductors, burglars) and social stereotypes (Greenlanders, their supposedly cold-footed men). The cartoon at bottom—captioned "WHERE IS THE S.P.C.A.?"—appears to reference animal cruelty, though its connection to the text above is unclear without additional context. The satire mocks fortune-telling's absurdity while needling contemporary American social pretensions and economic anxieties of the early 20th century.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
THE ONE DOOR IT WILL NOT OPEN. Judge’s Compiled by Horace Dodd Gastit, P. D. Q. JANUARY. 12th—The juxtaposition of the plan- ets upon this date is such that male children born upon it between noon and midnight should not be permitted to mix dill pickles, canned lobster, pate de foie gras or green apples with their pasteur- ized milk during the first three weeks of their existence. No amount of milk pas- teurization will off- set the effect of a dill-pickle upon the immature di- gestive apparatus of a child of that tender age. 13th—If you are born on January 13th is a sign of ill-luck if, in choosing the spot for your first appearance, you select a subway train, a box at the opera, a seat on the bleachers at a world-series baseball championship, either in New York or Boston, or the cabin of an ice-bound canal boat on the silvery surface of the Erie Canal. 14th—If your birthday falls upon January 14th and your income is only twelve dollars a week, beware of the tall, dark man, with a slight cast in his eye, who tries to sell you a five-thousand-dollar motor car, with a set of Kipling thrown in, if you add a glass wind shield to the outfit, on the installment plan, calling for the payment of seventy-five dollars a month. Birthday 15th—All children born on the fif- teenth of January, with their grandparents still living, will take after their grandfathers, especially at Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner, where the old people are served first. 16th—Street-car conductors whose birthday falls on this date should be particularly careful not to knock down fares in the presence either of the spotters or the receiver of the road, since this will be a sure forerunner of bad luck, involving an almost immediate loss of em- ployment. 17th—A burglar born on January 17th, who has successfully pulled off a bit of second-story work on the fifteenth, will do well to avoid Book. all heavily built men with black mustachios, wearing police uni- forms, who cross their paths, as almost certain preliminaries of a sudden change of residence and occupation, 18th—The daughter of a Greenlander born on this date will experience considerable cold weather before she finally lands the man of her choice, though this does not at all imply the certainty of her becom- ing a wall-flower. It is rather evidence that even in matters of courtship the average male citizen of Greenland is a sufferer from cold feet. A date-bearing tree and a calendar bearing dates are somewhat different. WHERE IS THE S. P. C. A.? comicbooks.com