Judge — May 31, 1913 — page 10: what you’re looking at

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

Nero's Fishpond HISTORIANS are elated over the cabled news that Nero’s fishpond has just been discovered. We didn’t know before that he had a fishpond, but we are glad that it has been found. We don’t know who had it all the time, but, just the same, we are pleased to know that once more it is in safe hands. We have too much feeling against the WATCHING « OUR=FUN °£.\, WORLD *GO @® re 3 By HOMER CRO ing a poet than we would of calling up the butcher and ordering a tender cutlet. A poet has a right to live as well as any- body else. If Nero thought the bard’s poem too long or monotonous, off would go the man’s head. Of course in those days they wrote very long poems—but this isn’t a fair test. He beheaded a woman because she wouldn’t fall in love withhim. He hadn’t any excuse for that. The memory of such a man shouldn’t be kept green. We may be a bit bitter, but personally we wish that Nero had fallen into his fishpond and had had to cry for succor until he thought his last moments on earth had come. If we had been there, we would have been of the very last to roll him on a “WE'LL WARRANT THAT HE HAD A PENCE AROUND IT.” barrel. We'd have felt more gentleman to fee. very elated over the news that his private trout pool has been brought to light. Nero is a man we never had any use for. We would have liked to kick him. Only that he has been called away to a worse shore keeps us from speaking more plainly about him. We make it a practice never to speak slightingly of any one gone from this earth, but at the same time we wish it known that we do not approve of Nero either as a statesman or as a man. He has an unsavory reputation. We'll bet that when his fishpond was in its prime he didn’t invite a single one of his acquaintances to come over and bring a pole. We'll warrant that he had a fence around it higher than a man on horse- back, and that it was a $500 fine to throw a tin can into the pond, and immediate hanging if caught on the premises with a can of worms. Then, on top of that, we'll wager that when anybody, even though he had to go out into the foothills around Rome to any creek that he could find, told a bigger fish story than he did, Nero flew off the handle about it and or- dered the man burned in oil. That was the kind of a man Nero was! Nobody could treat his mother-in-law the way he did and be a gentlerran—we don’t care what kind of a mother-in-law she was. Nero didn’t think any more of behead- like taking a stave to him. Punishing the Baggage-smashers A BAGGAGE-SMASHER in Chicago the other day tackled a trunk that had dynamite in it. The dynamite fol- lowed the custom usually observed by dynamite when roughly handled, and an obliging comrade ran for an ambulance, and bit by bit the baggage-smasher was put into the conveyance. We think this is a bit too rough on the baggage-smasher. The owner of the trunk should have con- sidered that maybe the smasher had a wife waiting at the win- dow each night for him to come home after a busy twelve hours of luggage wrecking. Nodoubt there are baggage-breakers who could persuade women to marry them. It is wrong to make wives suffer for the faults of their husbands. Probably the wives don’t know what business their husbands are in. Probably the husbands tell their wives that they are kept busy around the station telling old women traveling alone when to take their medi- cine, or amusing the parrot while the owner is getting her trunk checked. If you could pick out discriminating dynamite that would surprise only the bachelors, all would be well and good; NS ROY. SB, —Ss but, unfortunately, dynamite is no judge of character. When it is used roughly, it doesn’t pause to see who is overstep- ping conventionalities. It doesn’t stop to-ask if anybody is waiting in the win- dow; instead, it impulsively goes ahead and leaves the questions to a disinter- ested party. It wreaks its own revenge, and, when dynamite wreaks, there isn’t much left for outsiders to do but send their sym- pathy. A piece of determined dynamite doesn’t care how many children are wait- ing in the window. All it thinks about is its wreaking. After dynamite has made up its mind to wreak, there isn’t much anybody can say to change it. It strikes out at the smasher and lets the chips fall where they may. It does little good to talk back to dyna- mite. Before you get well started in your argument, a man in a white coat is saying, ‘Be careful there not to run into the door with the stretcher.’’ You can’t get ahead of dynamite. Nine times out of ten, it gets ahead of you, and near by there is an isolated eye. We never remember seeing a person who had had a successful argument with a stick of dynamite. We have seen a number of gentlemen just before the mis- understanding started, but we soon lost track of them. As long as baggage-smashers have “IP YOU COULD PICK OUT DISCRIMINATING DYNAMITE.” wives waiting in the window, we had best leave their punishment to another life. If we only knew which ones were the married ones, it would be different! A Poughkeepsie bride wants a separa- tion because her husband wouldn’t buy cucumbers. It takes all our will power to keep from making a pun about being in a pickle, but we're going to stick it out. comicbooks.com