Judge, 1913-07-12 · page 9 of 24
Judge — July 12, 1913 — page 9: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page satirizes the tango craze that swept America in the early 1910s. The top illustration shows wedding guests dancing wildly in tango style, with money scattered on the floor—mocking how the fashionable dance consumed wealth and attention. The accompanying jokes mock various social absurdities of the era: a man wearing a raw potato as a watch charm (suggesting farm failure disguised as pretension), complaints about daughters and sons-in-law as marital burdens, and Brooklyn's abandonment of water wagons (likely referencing Prohibition debates or municipal inefficiency). "The Oasis" illustration depicts a homeless or vagrant figure—suggesting the contrast between wealthy tango-dancers and the urban poor. The smaller jokes about flies, emotions, and French words ("raconteur") represent typical period humor: mild social observation and wordplay. Overall, the page lampoons both the frivolous excess of tango-dancing society and everyday domestic frustrations, typical of Judge's satirical approach to American life.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
A WEDDING A LA TANGO Apostrophe to a Fly H, FLY! oh, pesky fly, with eye full keen, Thou art enough to cause one suicide, As thou doth every means to thwart thee quite deride And laughest at the swatter and the screen. Oh, fly, bowed down with cholera and the ip, Thy buzz does bring distraction to our ears And to our eyes the brine and salty tears. Is there no way to get thee on the hip And do thee and thy progeny up brown? Oh, fly! thou curse of weather that is hot, In vain we sputter, fume and chase and swat! Bad and Worse Mack—I have three daughters on my hands. Wyld—That's nothing. sons-in-law on mine. Ah, Me! The water wagon has been completely abandoned in Brooklyn. Three of them, which cost $650 each, were sold under the hammer for $67.73 each. Still, it is a good town to live in. Critical He—Why does an actor, to portray deep emotion, clutch at his head, and an actress at her heart? She—Each feels it most in the weakest point. I have three Pride Jones—What a puff ball Burlson’s got to be since he bought that farm up-State! Why, every day the grinning nut comes to the office wearing a raw potato for a watch charm. Smith—Yes; he explained about that potato to me. It was his share of last year’s crop, Nomerically Speaking “Did he kiss you good-by?’’ I asked her. She nodded her pretty head. “How singular!” I was sarcastic. “No; plural,’ was all that she said. A Free Translation “Say, pop, what's a ‘raconteur’?”” “French for a bore.’? \ ihe i THE OASIS comicbooks.com