Judge, 1914-03-14 · page 7 of 24
Judge — March 14, 1914 — page 7: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This humorous short story satirizes the early automobile era's mechanical unreliability and the legal absurdity it created. The protagonist, Bilkins, owns a chronically broken-down car that occasionally works well enough to deceive him into keeping it rather than scrapping it for parts. The satire's punch: Bilkins is arrested for speeding when his car unexpectedly lurches to forty miles per hour after hitting a banana peel—malfunctioning unpredictably rather than through reckless driving. The story highlights the legal technicality that traps him: he's technically guilty of speeding despite being morally innocent, since the car's mechanical failure (not his negligence) caused the violation. The "Repartee" heading and dock-scene illustration suggest this is a humorous miscellany page rather than focused political commentary. The lower illustration captioned "That Box of Candy You Brought for Her" appears unrelated domestic humor.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
The funny man—Ship ahoy! What are you carrying, captain? what to do next. He could have broken it up and got the price of old iron for it maybe, but he revolted against such des- ecration. The car wasn’t junk, because Bilkins could tinker it up a bit, and it would run in great shape for two or three days before breaking down again. Mere junk wouldn’t do that, and Bilkins would not put the car on the junk pile. But it was these spurts of good behavior that made Bilkins unhappy to the point of des- peration. He would go out in it with friends who didn’t know any better, and they would have to walk home or Blikins would have to buy trolley tickets for the party or railroad tickets, according to how far the car went before something happened to it. But Bilkins was not to suffer always. One day after elaborate repairs, costing as much as automobile repairs usually do, Bilkins sailed away alone on a day’s tou! Nobody else would take the risk. Eve: thing was so lovely all forenoon that Bil- kins was almost glad he had not been able to part with his car. But not so, later in the day. At five p. m., ten miles from home, he was arrested for speeding. Anybody who knew that: car would have sworn in any court such a charge against it was a police frame-up. But it was a solemn fact. Bilkins was arrested for Speeding, and he was guilty. But not morally so. It was purely a legal tech- nicality. For two hours the car had been limping along at about three miles an hour, when just at the outskirts of a town it slipped REPARTEE on a banana peel, got a hard bump, some- thing cracked inside of it, and away it went at forty miles an hour. Bilkins wasn’t accustomed to handling a car at that velocity, but it wouldn’t have made any difference if he had been, for the running gear had shifted a clutch or split a spark plug or blown out a piston or done something careless as usual, and Bilkins couldn't do a thing with it but turn on the honker and let her go. And how she did go! The entire force of local police with the Sunday contingent of deputies THAT BOX Captain—Soft shell clams. You lookin’ fer a passage? lit out in wild pursuit, but Bilkins would have easily run away from everything and escaped if the car had been of the dependable kind as advertised. But it wasn’t. Just as Bilkins realized he was being pursued and began to hope he would get away, the car gave a grunt, snorted a time or two, began to wabble on its tires, chugged despairingly, slid off into the gutterandstuck. Here Bilkins was seized by a minion of the law before he could let go of the wheel. He tried to explain, castes bee OF CANDY YOU BROUGHT FOR HER comicbooks.com