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Judge, 1913-03-08 · page 17 of 24

Judge — March 8, 1913 — page 17: what you’re looking at

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Judge — March 8, 1913 — page 17: Judge, 1913-03-08

What you’re looking at

This satirical piece mocks the American vacation industry and middle-class aspirations circa 1913. A father and son observe a sleeping "Vacationisticus Americanus"—a exhausted man who saved money all year through strict economy, then spent lavishly at a fashionable resort, only to return utterly depleted. The satire targets multiple absurdities: the working-class person's self-denial to afford "nine dollars a day" accommodations (expensive then), the resort's exploitation (tiny rooms, rickety beds, expensive gratuities), and the cruel irony that the vacation meant to restore him has instead destroyed him. The "social zoo" framing presents American leisure culture as a specimen worthy of naturalistic study—ridiculous animal behavior observed by civilization. The joke assumes readers recognize this pattern: exhausting yourself to afford a vacation that exhausts you further.

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

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'HE BOY and his father were wan- dering through the social zoo, when they came upon the sleeping form of a weary-looking animal, lying in one cor- ner of his cage, snoring as if his heart would break. “Dear me!"’ said the boy. ‘*What a poor, tired-looking animal, father! What is he? “That, my son,’’ said the old gentle- is what is known as the Vaca- tionisticus Americanus—the returned vacationist. For almost a year he has been depriving himself of most of the comforts of life, underfeeding and suf- fering the privations of a drastic econ- omy, so that when the time came ‘he could afford to go off into the country and enjoy a period of rest and recrea- tion. He is now sleeping it off.’’ “Sleeping what off, father?’’ asked the boy. ‘‘The privations of economy ?’’ “No, my son,”’ said the old gentleman sadly. ‘The period of rest and recrea- tion. It will take him a long time to recover from its effects. You see, my lad, when he found that he had saved up enough money to enable him to do the thing in style, he went to a fashion- able American resort and secured ac- commodations at nine dollars a day, and tips, everything included. His room was almost large enough to accommo- date three mosquitoes and himself with- out undue contraction of his muscles, provided he left his trunk out in the hall, looking out over the tin roof of the hotel kitchens. He has slept every night for two or three weeks—I judge from his utter exhaustion that he has had three weeks’ vacation rather than two—on a bed, the softest part of which was the frame, ‘since it was made of soft Georgia pine, with a mahogany fin- ish, the mattress being built after the pattern of a Maine highway—lumpy, full of thank-you-marms, and as yield- ing to the weary form as a concrete garden sofa. Owing to the prohibitive tax set upon cleanliness by the Ameri- can hotel proprietor in his bathroom tariff, he has had to go without his in- vigorating morning plunge and content himself with squeezing the same pint of water over his head and shoulders two or three times out of his own bath sponge, for which the proprietor would charge him squeezage if he knew he had it. “‘Then,"’ the old gentleman went on, “the has eaten three solid meals a day, living on the fat of the American plan, which leads the patrons of our hotels to consume three or four times as much food as they can digest, in order to keep even with the game. ‘His breakfast has consisted of three soft-boiled eggs, served in a tumbler—always a pleasant sight to the true lover of color—five hard-boiled fish cakes, two portions of French fried potatoes, one cast-iron bit of sole leather, called on the bill-of-fare a tenderloin steak, and eight porous plasters masquerading as buckwheat cakes, swimming in a mixture of oleo- margarine and almost-maple syrup, washed down by a dark-brown liquid, LOOK—A Water Proofed Cloth Alpine! mon as to dlecard the old winter styles ‘oe rw, rhe FRENCH CO. 259 Arch. 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