Judge — January 6, 1917 — page 13: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This cartoon satirizes the absent-minded academic—a stock character obsessed with intellectual pursuits while lacking practical sense. A professorial figure has won a bet against Jones by achieving exceptional fuel efficiency (55+ miles on 5 gallons), wagering his prized Shakespeare First Folio. However, his absent-mindedness emerges immediately: he's driven so far into the countryside that night is falling and the car has nearly run out of gas, with no way to return home. The joke relies on the contrast between his scholarly cleverness (winning the wager through mechanical efficiency) and his complete obliviousness to real-world consequences. His wife Emily's worried question about getting back underscores his impracticality. The cartoon reflects early 20th-century anxieties about automobiles and pokes fun at ivory-tower academics disconnected from everyday concerns.