Judge — November 11, 1916 — page 8: what you’re looking at

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

WALL, LIFE HAS BEEN PRETTY DULL BUT NOW WE HAVE SOMETHING TOUVE For \ILLIE 1S IN SMITHS cisreRN- THREE OF THE GIRLS HAVE THE CROuP- MYRTLE GOT Pur BACK A GRADE AT SCHOOL- ETHEL BURNED: THE FIVE Boys WISHING MYSELF WORRY AM a young man twenty-seven years old. I would like to have eight or twelve children ranging in age from three to six. Not caring for golf or cricket or fly-fishing or bear-baiting or motor-boating, I am in need of diversion. I decided this today. Jack and Bates and Ben are all out of town thi I have been alone since yesterday noon. I have been to picture shows and I have walked like a wild man, and I know exactly how Kelly felt when his wife went to the country last summer and left him a waif in the metropolis. Jack and Bates and I have a flat and a cook. We are old bachelors, 27 to 35. I don’t like them very well, usually. We have been in the flat a cou- ple of years. We sit around and growl, or maybe we sit around and get along all right. It depends. I bought a dime’s worth of Sunday papers this morning—tons and tons of them, and ended with aheadache. Then I got out and walked Bates says when a man marries, it is good night old friends. For instance, we never go out to see our old friends who have married and settled on the north side. Bates says they deserve it—it is one of the penalties of getting married. The fact is, we don’t go any place. I told them the other night we were fossilizing foot by foot. Jack laughed and said that if one of us dropped out and got married, that particular one would begin to fossilize, but whoever heard of young. ve, unmarried men in the prime of life fossilizing? And yet, since the three of them have been gone, an awful realization has come to me. We are as bad off as any marricd couple. Else I wouldn't have this lost feeling. I ought to know how to ne in the big city. [have been alone in big ¢ and e made it pretty well. But now I am like Kelly last summer. I walked down the street this morning and thought of a lot of hopeless things. The governor of the state went past in an automobile, with a plug hat on his head. That made me reflect that I get no fun out of institutions. 1 wish I could fool myself into believing that I am an institution—enough to wear a plug hat. Church was out about this time, and I passed a man and his wife. They had a lot of children. Three or four of the youngsters were about to get run over bya lot of automobiles—and how the man must have enjoyed it! It was exciting even for me, and I had only a passing interest in the children. I wasn’t gam- bling anything. Then I thought I would like to have eight or twelve children all about the running-over age. I would like to hunt for them in cisterns and have the police busy looking for one or two of them all the time. I would like to be a little bit poor, so that twenty-four shoes to buy would rise up like a spectre ever so often 1 would like for one or two of them to have the measles most of the time, or stone bruises or mumps, or some of the current children’s maladies. Maybe measles are not, any more. Then—I would be an institution. I might wear a plug hat. Then Sunday would be SOME day. But I guess it is no use. It is a bachelor’s fancy, and I suppose that if I made a start I would find one child a three-ring worry and no doubt give up my aspiration for a dozen. Atany rate I would have to change from Bates and Jack and Ben—they have no talent at such things. And I don’t like that. I will stay this Sunday out. I will stay single and childless until tomorrow—and then sit around with Bates and Jack and Ben and be satisfied. ’ —Don Herold. IF GOLF COURSES KEEP GETTING HARDER We consider this a fair hole. With a little more trapping it will be plenty stiff enough for the best of them. comicbooks.