Judge, 1916-04-01 · page 16 of 28
Judge — April 1, 1916 — page 16: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This satirical piece contrasts modern life's complications with simpler times. Two figures—a man and a woman (identified as "Dick" and a "Fair co-ed")—discuss career plans at Stanford University. The dialogue joke hinges on the woman's announcement of marriage plans, which she hadn't meant to reveal yet. The accompanying poem by Gregory Hartswick laments how contemporary life burdens men with legal fees, anxiety, and moral constraints imposed by society and religion. It nostalgically contrasts this with "Primitive Man," who needed only a stick to survive and whose community honored him in death without modern complications. The satire targets early 20th-century anxieties: professional ambitions, matrimonial expectations for educated women, legal entanglement, and the loss of simpler values—suggesting modern "civilization" creates more problems than it solves.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
AT LELAND Dick—I suppose you have a career selected ? PRI by MIT HE WORRIES of Man become many and great in this era of labor and strife, hildren and wife; And Spec ation is making him hustle to gather what little he ce that he'd like to change place with the penniless Pri If we have a of guile, And the fees we r And som When the Man. us lawbooks we scan. If of a brick on the end of a stick was enough for the Primitive STANFORD Fair co-ed —Why, yes GREGORY f wy ) fine UNIVERSITY but we hadn't intended to announce it till after commencement, E M WARTSWIOK When the r v to the Law, for and the legal exper , 4 matter Did our ancestor unto Reno for aid when his v © be shrewish stead, sitid the We are hemr And we ted by dogmas carcely dare move from our forerunners’ groove, lest we answer to for our deeds an help God So we hardly n heretical Just give h and the Py the Primitive Man. igh for the simpler Prime would, someh tial plan make it right for When we die, we are damned, as our ministers tell, unless saved by a provident grace: We soon are forgotten, our names are obscured, and an But when one of them died, in that age k Put his corpse in a hole, m her steps into our place go, they gathered together the clan 1a God of the Primitive Man! a saint of his soul, comicbooks.com