Judge, 1915-06-12 · page 7 of 24
Judge — June 12, 1915 — page 7: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page presents nostalgic humor contrasting old and new social customs. Two middle-aged men reminisce about their youth—dancing the "quadrille," wearing tallowed boots and cinnamon hair oil, courting modestly dressed girls in simple fabrics. They lament how contemporary young women dress extravagantly (one recalls a girl's Paris hat costing more than her entire childhood wardrobe) and behave boldly—now casually inviting men to cocktails. The satire targets turn-of-the-century anxieties about changing social mores: female independence, fashion excess, and moral decline. One man becomes so emotionally overwhelmed by nostalgia he nearly weeps—a comedic exaggeration of generational anxiety. The small cartoon below, "Evidence to the Contrary," jokes that men over forty argue with women, implying stubbornness or defensiveness about modernity—likely a dig at the older generation's resistance to women's changing roles.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
THE WONDERS OF NEW YORK 1 from it in those days, huh? We just sailed up toagirl andcrooked girls for a shindig and—Oh, come, let’s cut it out! Come along out an elbow and said, ‘Can I have the pleasure of this quadrille with into the dining-room and have a cocktail. I know how to mix a you?’ Remember how some of the boys called it ‘ca-drille’?_ Gee! new one."’ but didn’t our big stoga boots hoe it down? Remember with “*T'll bet it won't taste half as good as the cider used to taste’’-—— what extra care we tallowed up our boots, and, say, Spencer, do “Shut up, or I'll brain you!"’ you remember the red cinnamon hair oil we used? And some of the boys put so much musk on their handkerchiefs, you could smell it before they got into the hall! Heigh-o, Bob, but those were good old days!"" “You bet they were, Bill! And the girls we danced with weren't dolled up like those young things out there. A girl dressed like that in our young days would have been chased out of town as a bad character— hanged if she wouldn't! I can see Susie Peters now in her green and red flowered delaine, and Janie Jasper in her blue merino with a pink bow at her throat and another in her hair. Met Janie in Paris last spring, and I reckon the hat she had on cost more than all of her clothes for three years cost when she was a village girl. I reckon she'd faint dead away if either of us reminded her of how you and she used to get out in the middle of the old kitchens and dance a hoe down! You remember how"’ “Shut up, or I'll murder you! You’ve made me remember so much now that there'll be the dazing spectacle of a two-hundred-and-thirty-pound man bawling out loud if you don’t stop, and I haven't any handkerchief with me! Do I remember when I weighed about a hundred and twenty and you could EVIDENCE TO THE CONTRARY hide behind a rail stuck on end, and we used to get Upson—I'm sure Jadkins is past forty. What makes you think he isa't? out the old bobsled and gather up the other boys and 1 .7¢us—No tan past forty ever tries to argue with a woman comicbooks.com