Judge, 1913-12-06 · page 24 of 40
Judge — December 6, 1913 — page 24: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This Judge magazine page contains two distinct pieces satirizing Christmas spending habits circa early 1900s. **Top narrative**: A romantic comedy about Olivia, who spies her suitor John buying an expensive pearl necklace at a jeweler's window. She assumes it's for her. At Christmas, John gives her lavish gifts—but not the necklace. Olivia becomes obsessed with finding "The Other Woman," assuming he kept the necklace for a rival. The joke: her romantic fantasy collapses into jealous suspicion. **Bottom poem "A Christmas Bill Receipted"** by Wilbur D. Nesbit: The speaker admits compulsive holiday overspending—gifts that ballooned from a planned budget to excessive purchases. Rather than expressing regret, he celebrates this impulse as morally worthwhile, concluding "A Christmas-gift spree always pays for itself!" **The satire**: Both pieces mock middle-class Americans' inability to control Christmas spending despite financial anxiety—treating wasteful generosity as virtue rather than vice. The magazine critiques this self-deluding justification of holiday excess.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
After Olivia and Beatrice had cut a swath Good Business down the Avenue—the flowers of admiration Crawford—So you being piled up on one side and the weeds of envy ¥ on the other—they turned at Olivia's motion. “I want to look at that necklace again,’’ she said. As they neared the jeweler’s, they saw John contemplating that very adornment in the window, and they tiptoed past, Olivia hiding herself behind her muff, and secured a place where they could note John without being recognized. John presently went into the jeweler’s and in a few moments came out again. He seemed all at once to be in haste, and his face wore a smile of satisfaction. When John had disappeared, Olivia and Beatrice, with the same impulse, entered the shop. The necklace, the distin- guished salesman said, with a regret that was almost tearful, had just been sold. Ah! The joy of Olivia! Royal Gorge Christmas came. Olivia was lavishly remembered by John and all her family and friends. And, indeed, she ought to have been a happy woman. But she saw nothing of the pearl necklace. “He is keeping it for me for New Year,’’ she said to Bea- trice, who was in the dumps because her husband had forgotten to get for her something upon which she had set her mind. “I wish Clarence were as thoughtful for me as John is for approve of the cus- tom of exchanging presents? Crabshaw— Most assuredly, Whenwe were married we got seventeen sets of nut picks as wedding gifts, and we've man- aged to work them all off as Christmas presents. “Did you have a merty Christmas?” inquired the visitor. “Yes, ma'am,” replied Willie. “They had to send for the doctor."” you, dear,’’ Beatrice remarked. 1 - Happy New Year, with its festivity, its felicitations and its Sperling of Bue auguries of good fortune, came to Olivia; but the pearl neck- MODEL FOR SANTA CLAUS, SMALL lace didn’t. A “bird in the CHIMNEY SIZE | And for the first time in her life Olivia has an absorbing majors is worth two « Ag chimneys didn't seem to grow larger, I di object. She is looking for The Other Woman. in the bush. eted, and thus made myself smaller.’ A Christmas Bill Receipted By WILBUR D. NESBIT OF COURSE I'm extravagant—needlessly so! You haven't said anything that I don’t know. It’s true I've sent presents to kin and to friend— Just yielded to that surging impulse to send. It’s true in November I fixed up a list, The cost of which scarcely would ever be missed; And then, nearing Christmas, more names came to mind, And I went a-hunting for what I might find. And fifty-cent gifts grew to dollars and more— Oh, yes, you may say that I bought out a store! Go on, then, and say it! I did it; but, then, You know very well I would do it again. Yes, trinkets and gimcracks and booklets and cards And other things purchased by pounds and by yards! And they had to stop me, I truly believe, From buying when all the shops closed Christmas Eve. And I'm unrepentant—I know I'm in debt, But I have no glimmer or trace of regret. Why, man, you don’t know what it’s worth just to live And never stop thinking of where you can give! How’s that? I'll be sober and solemn and still And wish I'd known better when I get the bill? Ah, friend, you may put such advice on the shelf! A Christmas-gift spree always pays for itself! “Hi, lady, youse kin have half of mine fer a nickel !"" Pessimism has no chance for an argument these days. comicbooks.com