Judge, 1916-12-16 · page 14 of 28
Judge — December 16, 1916 — page 14: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page presents a comedic dialogue between two Jewish characters—Max Markowitz (a skirt manufacturer) and his brother-in-law Henry Shapiro—discussing Max's disastrous first ice-skating experience. **The Satire:** The humor relies on ethnic stereotyping typical of early 20th-century American comic magazines. Max speaks in a heavily Yiddish-inflected dialect ("gefahrlich," "picktche") and displays the perspective of an immigrant bewildered by American leisure activities. His wife Minnie pressures him to modernize and participate in fashionable pastimes like ice skating, which he finds absurd—particularly the repetitive circular motion and the commercialized "American" spectacle of freezing a river indoors. **The Point:** The joke mocks both the gap between immigrant and American culture, and the obsessive nature of modern recreation. Max's inability to understand why people endlessly circle an ice rink mirrors broader anxieties about American consumer culture and leisure—presented through the lens of an outsider's bewildered commentary. The accompanying illustration shows a silhouetted couple in conversation, unrelated to the main text.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
“SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER" MARKOWITZ AND HENRY DISCUSS “AROUND AND AROUND” by Lou 6“ HAT are you standing there looking at me like I W was a cow with five fect or a cat with nine tails?” demanded Max Markowitz, the skirt) manufac- turer, as he limped into his office with the aid of a cane. “Henr, n't you never scen a man with a stick, what's handy for a foot? Hurry up, g¢ me a chair “Was you in an accidence?” anxiously inquired Henry Shapiro, as he pushed a chair towards his boss and brother- in-law. “What then, wasn’t I with Minnie?” bitterly replied Marko- witz, sitting himself down slowly. ‘Your sister Minnie with her styles and pleasures will make me some day such a cripple that I'll have to sign checks with a wink instead of a cross! A whole week she bothered me I should go by the rink with he All the time yesterday, it was ‘Max, let’s go skating.’ ‘Ma don’t be a back-number!’ ‘Max, it will do you a lot of gooc So I got sick and tired hearing it and said ‘Alleright, I'll go!” I thought I'll look over the styles a little; maybe I commence line of skating skoits, But look what I got from being an casy mark! A dizzy feeling in my head, and black a ! “It ain’t so gefahrlich, it'll go over,” suggested Henry Applicant—| don’t know, ut I can learn to eat most anything! Mistress—And are Hn fond of dogs ? ma‘am. RAB philosophically. “Who don’t suffer a little for pleasure? Didn't the ice-rink make a hit with you for the foist time?” “Tt made a hit for the last time, too,” responded Marko- witz sarcastically. “It’s a funny business they got here in America. They take a river, put it in a house, and freeze it with pipes. Now I know why it is ys so cold in our apart- ment, what’s got steam heat in the contract, but not in the pipes. So soon I got in, I felt like a poor relation; cold like anything; and after paying a dollar I look around to see the ice, but can you sce your left car? Vu, just the same I see the ice. Instead I see a lot of people, all busy like they was having a prize contest by a shoe-cloiks’ convention; busy by. shoe- strings and button-hook: “We look around, where to go in, and sce a door. I com- mence to open it and I hear tango music. I close it quick. 1 didn’t want to go to paret! A dollar was enough to spend on a Sunday night. So Minnie and me go back to the ticket nd ask him where is the skating rink? He was busy and ke he was going to call an ambulance from Bellevue Minnie pulled me away and said, ‘Maybe it is really ’ pointing to the cabaret door. I told her she was y; how long could ice last with music like that? But then » everybody going through that door; with skates, too So we try again. Sure enough they had a Hawaiian orchestra like by dancing, in the skating rink! But I still think they're crazy. If I was the boss, I would hire an Eskimo band.” “Nu, nu, what was inside?” impatiently asked Henry. “Inside? Inside it was around and around!” retorted Marko witz. ‘People running like after five o’clock; only a thousand per cent. quicker. Like if a moving picktche operator was put ting on steam and running the film a mile a minute.’ “But didn’t the people get tired going around and around?” quizzed Henry. “Sure; they changed every few minutes,” asserted witz. “A bell would ring and they'd toin around and—" “Then what?” broke in Henry, eagerly. “They'd go around and around again!” answered Marko- witz. (Continued on second page following.) arko-