Judge, 1914-08-01 · page 12 of 24
Judge — August 1, 1914 — page 12: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page satirizes affected artistic pretension and racial stereotyping common in early 20th-century America. A woman plays a phonograph recording, claiming to appreciate its "exquisite melody" and "sentiment." When the narrator listens, the machine produces nonsensical gibberish—specifically a crude "darky" minstrel song with phonetic mockery of Black speech and dialect ("um-um-bizzing," "kunjar man," references to slavery and cotton picking). The satire works on two levels: First, it mocks the woman's false sophistication—she hears profound artistry where only gibberish exists. Second, and more troublingly, it ridicules Black vernacular speech itself as inherently absurd and laughable. The illustration shows theatrical figures, emphasizing the performative nature of both the woman's pretense and minstrelsy entertainment itself. The joke assumes readers will find dialect humor entertaining, reflecting period attitudes about race and entertainment.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
x3 ce NOW," she said, “this is a new record of It’s the Sentiment whieh Lam fond, and 1 it. The tune is not but that isnot what I care about. It's the sentiment—the exquisite melody. Listen." lever, right off the griddle, so to speak. ‘The phonoyraph r-er-When ther silveer nm © bright her-r waw-waw-er-waw my i-igeht oh, the-en, er. -ker lo-ow, bh um-kwee-bah lo-ove her s« ler waw-kaw-urn-lur she-«n With its ab-ah-unce so-« n, As er birdling um-kum-lee Carn its um-tah in er tr Through the unker-ing In its ess-er-res r-lika dream! She stopped the music machine and turned to me with her ey uln just chockful of s« id you ever," sh ed m anything so full of a sense of mystery, of the w unknown I was glad that I could answer with direct truthfulness that certainly never did “So difficult to put into words!" she suggested dreamily dl. cord and rewinding th tid it e turned it loose, ‘tis ju ) me it seems impussible,”” L adm Meanwhile she was changing th a pictu and s| ertainly “This on piece of darky talk. But they f their psychol« she ann aught rtainly have the actual nus y I put my ears at their most receptive angle, with spinnakers out Here is what came out of the box Er-er-er-er- -Whan der doozy bam is umming on the flippy ippy Den we da arkies um-um-bizzing wiz um banan ! Fer der pickaninny’s ceping er farsome, fearsome man, Pickin’ quickin, uz-zee-wazzy, on der onterootin banjo Oh, Ah love ter hear der umpty dum by the flowin’ blowin’ an Oh ha, dem funny days!—oh ha, sunny days! Hidin’, bidin’, ridin’, idin’, Taka sassy cawassy Down-n-n-n-n in Jnw-jar! “That is the real thing, isn't it?" she asked “It's certainly amazing to me,’ was my comment, ‘One can almost see the hoe es patting juba, while the kunjar man puts on n, seeing that she was trying to see the mea ion by th finish!" the cane brakes !"" ing of my remark, I hastened to with« Mar the capricorns she said, ‘tis a Portu ielito y de N ruage. But, wit from cir f a new one It sure does The next,"* ebrated tenor, Joao M von't mind its being in a foreig issue wy the e serenade, much, do they ‘an get the don’t matter “Oh, I th And I did. ns Well in Portugru comicbooks.com