Judge — June 9, 1917 — page 16: what you’re looking at

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

IS FOR FULLER. Could one Be fuller than Fuller of fun? He constantly pleases With pertinent wheeres; His industry's second to none. F FOR MISS FOSTER—enough To say she turns in clever stuff. The Cupids she pens Are better than men’s, And she’s’ making her mark as a“ Suff.” ray Yost. - IS FOR clever E. . FLOIRI; For years very nearly a 2 score he Has drawn for His Honor, Jokes, covers and genre; Lo: 2b We hope he'll repeat it co B gorry! Mrs. Clatterby Has New Neighbors By J. L. HARBOUR SUPPOSE, James, that you noticed lights inthe house across I the street when you came down the avenue, didn’t you? They moved in to-day. Mrs. Eager ’phoned and asked me if I knew who they were. She said that she had heard that a family with nine children had been looking at the house, but I have seen only three around and the youngest of them wheeled up the avenue in its baby carriage, so it can’t be that they have come from very far. I ’phoned to Mrs. Diggby to ask if she knew who they were. You know her cousin owns the house, and so I thought she might know, but she didn’t. JUDGE She said she was talking to her cousin’s wife over the ‘phone the other day and she didn’t say a word about the house being rented. Mrs. Perkinsby called out of a window of her house, and asked me if I knew who they were. She said that her husband had heard that a woman who keeps boarders had looked at the house, but the owner wouldn't rent it for a boarding-house, for which we can be thankful. Who wants to live right opposite a boarding-house with strange people coming and going all of the time and not one in a dozen of them people you want to know anything about? I noticed that one of the trunks had “J. B. L.” on one end and another had the name printed in full on it, but I couldn’t quite make out the name even with my opera glass. It looked like Lawson or Landon or—what is that? “Curiosity, thy name is Woman?” I don’t think that it indicates a particularly curious disposition to want to know who your nearest neighbors are! When it comes to mere idle curiosity I think I am about as free from it as the next one, but isn’t it natural that I should have an interest in people I have to see every day? They didn’t have very good furniture, but then no furniture looks very nice piled up on the pavement with maybe a washtub on top of the piano; and I always feel that all the people in the nearby houses are gaping out of their windows and commenting on your furniture when we move! I think it is a pity people can’t move under the friendly cover of a dark night so that gaping, curious-minded people can’t annoy you by staring out of their windows at what you have! It makes you feel so sort of cheap with your kitchen chairs and your poorest furniture exposed to the public gaze. The moving people cover up all your nice things that you'd rather like to have the gaping neighbors see. I’d rather have them cover up my old things. These people had a real nice sideboard. They took the coverings off of it before they carried it into the house. It looked like real mahogany so far as I could tell looking through my opera glass, but—what? It’s a pity I couldn’t have had an X-ray machine and found out what they had in their trunks? I suppose you think that is smart! It would take an X-ray machine to discover even a germ of anything smart or funny in most of your wit! As I say, it is perfectly reasonable and natural that I should like to know a little about people I live opposite. Of course it makes no difference with you when you are away all the time, but it is different with me having them right under my nose, and—I noticed that they had a phono- graph and I hope that when summer comes they won't be play- ing ragtime rubbish on it every evening as those people who lived in the house next to us did. There ought to be a law against—— I saw two women around the house. Both of them looked commonplace, but, dear me, one never looks anything but commonplace when one is moving and—they hung some real nice locking rugs on the line and they had a pair of Japanese vases four fect high and the biggest room in that house isn’t more than fourteen by sixteen and I should think vases of that size would be awful misfit in a small room. They have a big rubber tree and one of these big sword ferns that I wouldn’t give house room to, collecting dust and shedding leaves. And what on earth anybody wants a big, clumsy rubber tree for is more than—— what’s that? You'd rather have a rubber tree than a rubberneck in the house? Nice insinuation that is! What? You want to change your clothes before dinner because you are going out this evening? Well, while you are about it I wish that you would also change your disposition. But I guess that it is true that the leopard cannot change its spots any more than some men can change— flattering to a wife to have her husband stick his fingers in his ears while she is trying to converse with him! comicbooks.com