Judge — March 10, 1917 — page 9: what you’re looking at

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

HING KUNG KOW? Oh, I forgot ‘for the moment that you don’t know how to speak Chinese, and that I don’t either. In these days when the “Can’t you talk?” picture over the living room sofa has been super- seded by “Sunrise on Fujiyama,” and our stage has yielded to “The Yellow Jacket” the place formerly occupied by the pink pantaloons—in these bewildering days it is hard for one to remem- ber that his birth and upbringing were purely Oc dental Time was, when the Oriental Influence was lim- ited to cigarette advertisements. We were permitted glimpses of languorous ladies on cushioned couches, and assured that these were the natural beauties of Turkey; and we were similarly inducted into the study of the physical geography of the Egyptians. That this propaganda has led to the establishment of many seraglios in America, I rather doubt. I fear that the missionaries of Mohammedanism were too vague and impractical. Now, if only they had offered an attractive sixteen-picce set of wives that could be paid for in easy instalments, or a multiplex ménage that could be acquired one section at a time! . . . As it was, however, they were so vision- ary that the whole thing ended in smoke. Even if the historic harem skirt was traceable to this move- ment, as some scholars contend, that was not a real emancipation: it meant only a short step forward. But now, suddenly, the whole East is upon us. Dwarf gardens crown our parlor tables, and rice wafers our tea tables. Temple gongs herald the imminence of soup. In summer we burn votive joss sticks to our household mosquitoes. All decoration must have an Oriental motif, whether it be the interior decoration of our homes or the exterior decoration of our fair ones. Persian hangings serve for curtains or sle ; still heavier hangings, from Japan, are interchangeable as por- tiéres and evening wraps. Even in a room full of ancestral mahogany Eastern rugs hold the floor. A pair of large glass curtain rings to which a gathering By LAWTON THE EASTERN PROBLEM of silk stuff is appended, serves as a convenient bag for carrying the sort of things that women carry in bags like that. Go to‘the theater nowadays and you are likely to find the Ballet Russe sheherazading about the stage where erstwhile the bally English stood and delivered well-groomed epigrams; or you may find there some graduate of the School of Dramatic Arts of Jersey City exhibiting “Symbolic Poses of Ancient Burrra.” Go toa concert hall and you are likely to be entertained with a rendition of Din- kelheimer’s new “Javanese Symphony,” or a re- cital by Mme. Sapristi of ‘Nursery Tunes of Upper Baluchistan.” Go to an art exhibit expecting to see oil paintings, and you are sure to run into the John James Brown Collection of Siamese Carved Jade. Ishall have to get a complete new equipment of small talk. My faithful kit of “subjects of conver- sation,” “apt remarks,” “original-sounding yet in- offensive opinions,” etc., which I have carried about with me for social emergencies these ten years, will have to be entirely restocked. Tomorrow I shall set to work dutifully on preparing “things to say about Japanese prints.” After that I'll tackle Chi- nese porcelains and learn how to tell an apple-green vase of the Ming dynasty from a prune-purple skil- let of the Chowchow administration. In short, I'll attempt anything within reason. But if this Eastern Influence should ever get to the point where one would be called upon to grow a hirsute cranial appendage and go to bed on the floor with a slice of wood in licu of a pillow, I'd balk. I'll be a heathen only up to a certain point. But there’s no telling. For the Wild West has gone, and the Wild East has come to town. MACK ALL Stands Up For Him Hokus—That fellow Saphedde is awfully effemi- nate. Pokus—Oh, I don’t know. I gave him my seat ina crowded car the other day, and he thanked me for it. comicbooks.com