Judge — February 27, 1915 — page 13: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE CHILDISH APPETITE “ Mother, seein’ this is my birthday, I fink ye might let me eat somethin’ ‘at's bad fer me."” THE BEANFUGLES AT THE MOVIES Hy ARTHUR CHAPMAN NFORTUNATELY Colonel and Mrs. Beanfugle had dropped in at a moving-picture performance just before the climax of the last act of a thrilling Western drama in two reels. Then the lights went up, and the intermission was on. “Just our luck to get in here at the wrong time,”” sniffed Mrs. Beanfugle. ‘We've seen that cowboy throw the villain over the cliff to the rattlesnakes, but now we've got to sit through a three-reel sea story and two split-reel comedies and a travel scene be- fore we can find out what the unfortunate man did before he was converted into snake food." “Oh, well, what's the difference?’’ said the colonel. “T like those things just as well when I begin in the middle and then go all the way round the circuit be- fore I get the start of a piay.”” “That shows how you and your whole sex have CROCODILE TEARS been bluffing all the time!’ exclaimed Mrs. Beanfugle smiling triumphantly. “In what way?" asked the colonel dubiously. “Why, in accusing women of being the only ones who like to begin their sto- ries in the middle and read to the end and then jump back to the first chapter and read to the middle. That accusation has been hurled at us ever since there have been any novels. Men have claimed that they always began stories in the beginning and read them religiously through to the end, but we women—the unstable, flighty female sex—have persisted in reading stories backward and both ways from the middle and every way but the right way.”” The colonel settled glumly into his seat. **But now what do we find?’’ continued Mrs. Beanfugle, with a rising note of triumph in her voice. ‘‘Here are you men drifting into these moving-picture shows at any old time and admitting you like the patchwork effect of it all. You come in long after the preliminaries, preludes and preambles are out of the way. You haven’t the haziest idea what has gone before. You don’t know why the villain hates the hero, and why the heroine’s father is planning to ship her hastily to the South Seas in order to save her life from Black Handers. You don’t know why the poor girl who works in a dynamite factory pauses just before starting from her humble cabin and says, in twelve-inch letters on the screen, ‘I don’t know why I dread to go to work this morning.’ You don't know any of these things, and yet you are just as se- renely contented as the woman who has begun a novel in the seventeenth chapter.’” “‘Aw, shucks!"" said the colonel. ‘*Please be logical. There's a lot of difference in movies and books.’’ “Technicalities again—mere technicalities," said Mrs, Bean- fugle hotly. ‘‘But that flimsy refuge avails you men no longer, now that our sex is turning the searchlight of truth on your real characters. Asa matter of fact, you are even more curious than women to know what is to be the ending of any kind of a story. I believe you prefer to drop in at these moving-picture places right in the middle of a play. Your very lack of curiosity as to the causes that led to that un- fortunate young man being fed to the serpents would tend to prove my theory."’ ‘*Why not open a theater for men and produce plays that are begun in the middle ‘*Well, it would draw crowds, and there’d be money in it,’’ snapped Mrs. Beanfugle, as the lights went down and the intermission ended. The First Shall Be Last Miss Gushington—I think your novel has a perfect ending, Mr. Scribbler. Scribbler—How do you likethe opening chapter? Miss Gushington —Oh, I have not come to that yet! Three-quarters of some men’s time is devoted to explaining <S what they said before. SATURDAY NIGHT comicbooks.com