Judge — May 26, 1917 — page 13: what you’re looking at

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

THE MOST UNKINDEST CUT HERE are some tender, tactful souls who T shrink from harming any living creature; who practise all manner of evasion and circumlocu- tion to avoid hurting anyone's feelings. Yet even they are not proof against this one temptation to torment. They will step toward you, planting the cloven hoof with a metallic ring. Their eyes, sparkling with the unholy glare of incandescent brim- stone, will suddenly fix themselves balefully on your forehead and will travel upward, slowly, search- ingly, interminably. Tactual may succeed visual insult. Their hands may smooth your brow with bold, impious touch. Then, well assured, they stand off to lose none of the effect and with diabolical delight, they chuckle, “Getting a little bald, aren’t you Heavens! What a question! It may be considered rhetorical and disregarded but the sting is not so easily lost. Most likely a flood of crimson will mount and mount, throwing into relief those lonely hairs which previously had succeeded in mingling with a more luxuriant background. You feel the same sensations of embarassment as when the girls happened by the old swimming hole or when your wife first wore her new low-cut gown. It is as like the question is put jocosely. You are twitted gayly on the subject of baldnes ruinous to matrimonial prospects. There is a whole cycle of s that you must endure. You are referred to cartoonists’ diagrams which give full directions on how to brush three hairs four different ways. You suffer from the Simile of the Billiard Ball. The devil quotes Scripture to his own purpose by assuring you that the very hairs of your head are numbered. Perhaps (but probably not) the question has been put sympathetically. Such light sympathy we spurn. We should on Poet—(as he finishes his poem, “The Worthlessness of Money”) ever wrote, I hope to goodness I can sell it! -That’s the best thing I wh Alto REAL AND REEL be satisfied with nothing less than the mede of sorrow due at the loss of a limb. Then again you might play the man and resent such a question. The impulse is as irresistible as it is justifiable to leap upon your interrogator and snatch forth several handfulis of his fulsome locks, thus placing all future comments of his in Pessimism may cast its sombre hue over tne question. “Well, you might just as well let your hair go. There’s no stopping it when it once starts falling out. Of course, when it’s gone. you might try a wig, but they’re so hot, uncomfortable, unsatisfactory and unconvincing, don’t you know.” A large proportion of the queries propounded have as their origin an inordinate desire to suggest panaceas. Some, such as the barbers, have base, commercial designs, but others give their all of advice for the supreme altruistic pleasure of it. If you really want to save your hair, you must do as they say. This seems to consist in one or more of the following: visiting a series of doctors who grow more expensive by geometric progression; submitting to frequent and furious massages; applying various tonics such as petroleum, kerosene, salad oil; vanilla, Jap-a-lac or essence of Brus: sprout Flee fastest the questioner with the panaceas, or he will wreak the same havoc on your purse as he did on your dignity when he insinuated, “Getting a little bald, aren’t you?’’ rfax D. Downey. Nowadays some folks could see a plot in a comic opera. comicbooks.com