Judge, 1914-02-21 · page 9 of 24
Judge — February 21, 1914 — page 9: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This satirical piece mocks the hypocrisy of middle-class suburban life, specifically targeting a husband who wants to stay out late to hear the end of a serialized story (likely a stage play or serial fiction), claiming he'll tell his wife what happens. The large cartoon shows the wife at a theater box with the husband below, surrounded by servants/staff—illustrating their social pretensions. The main text is a wife's monologue that exposes the contradiction: she lectures about a speaker's advice on "cheerful conversation" promoting family harmony and digestion, yet her actual dinner is chaos—children quarreling, spilled milk, servants misbehaving, unpaid bills from the ice man and telephone company, and her constant nagging. She cannot stop interrupting her own lecture about cheerfulness to scold everyone around her. The joke: suburbanites aspire to refined gentility but their actual domestic life is petty, anxious, and contradictory. The small cartoon at bottom adds a minor joke about a boarding house resident's indifference to tea versus coffee.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
| | SUBTERFUGES OF A SUBURBANITE His cwife—Well, John, I hate to miss the last train; but I''m dying to know who stole the heroine's jewels. Hubby—I'll tell you what i'll do. ten times how to make gravy without an inch of clear grease floating around on top of it, and look atthat! She simply doesn’t think! I really wish, Charles, that you would speak to her about some things. Some girls will pay more heed to what the master says than the mistress, and if you spoke to her about some of her habits, it might have a good effect. “As I was saying, this speaker told us that cheerful conversation at the table had such a good influence on the children, and that it had a strong tendency along the line of— Oh, while I think of it, Charles, the ice man came to-day with the bill and would like to have you send a check by day after to-morrow at the lat- est, as he says that they are closing up their year. It’s an awful bill—nearly fifteen dollars—and I just believe that they put ice on the score card that we don’t get! Oh, yes; the telephone people rang up to-day about their bill and said it was ten days overdue, and the man was impudent enough to say that they would take the ‘phone out if the bill wasn’t paid by Saturday. The impudence of it! Let me see; where was I in what I was tell- ing you about the talk I heard this after- I'll ask one of the ushers. noon? He said that cheerfulness had a great deal to do with keeping us young, and that tranquillity of mind would— Willie and Lucy, if you don’t stop your quarreling at the table, you will both do without any dessert! He said that— Oh, I almost forget to tell you that a police- man called and said that you must get the ice off the walk in front of the house, and the maid talked awfully to-day because you hadn’t shoveled away the snow under the clothesline reel. You really must do it before you go downtown in the morning. “This speaker said that cheerful topics at the table had such a marked effect on digestion that low spirits— Now, Willie, look at that! A whole glass of milk spilled all over the table! Willie, I have a great mind to take you right upstairs now and— Charles, can’t you do anything to make that boy be- have as he should at the table? He's always spilling or upsetting something and— Look at this tablecloth! And it was put on clean this very noon! And the maid will rage like a fiend over it! Isn’t thisa nice mess? If I wa3 within reach of you, I would box your ears! No use trying to tell you what our speaker said about the value of cheerfulness at the table until I have cleaned up this dreadful mess that awful boy has made! He shall go without any dessert for this! Yes, you will! Stop your crying! Stop it! Charles, can’t you make him stop that awful noise?’’ Max Merryman, Landlady—Mr. Truitz, will you have tea or coffee? Star boarder—Sure! Whichever you call it. comicbooks.com