Judge, 1917-08-04 · page 15 of 28
Judge — August 4, 1917 — page 15: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains three satirical pieces reflecting early 20th-century American concerns: **"The Passing of Home"** laments that domestic life is disappearing as Americans embrace modern distractions—apartments, hotels, automobiles, movies, and travel. The accompanying illustration shows a man picking wildflowers with children, romanticizing a pastoral past now lost to urban development and commercialism. **"A Feminine Trait"** jokes that a girl reads books backward (starting with the last chapter), supposedly inheriting this oddity from her mother's reading habits—poking fun at female literary behavior. **"He Explains"** contains two brief jokes: one about hospital hours during sales, and another featuring a stuttering Southern man recounting romantic misadventures before marrying. Overall, the page reflects nostalgic anxiety about modernization's social costs, combined with genteel humor about gender and regional stereotypes typical of early-20th-century American satire.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
“Say, Mister! Can we pick a five-cent bunch of your daisies?” THE PASSING OF HOME HEN most of us were children, homes were common among all classes. It was considered quite the respect- able thing for men and women to have homes and to spend con- siderable time therein. But this custom has yielded to the ravages of time and counter attractions. In those early days, a favorite song was, “Home, Sweet Home,” but it has been a long time since any of us experienced a respondent thrill at its singing. A few years back, we recognized home's unpopularity in a popular song entitled “ Please Don’t Take Me Home,” but now one hardly hears the word mentioned one way or the other. Of course there have been a great many influences at work to bring about this wonderful metamorphosis, but chief among them may be mentioned tenements, apartment houses, family hotels, summer resorts, winter resorts, spring resorts, fall re- sorts, sleeping cars, ocean liners, cabarets, automobiles, the movies, tours abroad, yachts, houseboats, camp, bungalows and mansions. So long as these exist in such great quantities, there is no place for home in the domestic scheme of things and con- sequently it must succumb like everything else that has outlived its usefulness. —Ellis O. Jones. A Feminine Trait School Teacher—Your little girl is rather backward in her reading. Mr. Flubdub—Backward, ch? I suppose she takes that from her mother. Mrs. Flubdub always reads the last chapter first. He Explains Cityleigh (who has taken friend through big department storc)—Now you've scen everything but the hospital. It is closed at present. Friend—Why closed? Cityleigh—This isn’t bargain day. WAS MARRIED TO HER HE got on the train at a small town in the South and no sooner had he seated himself beside me than he began to fire questions. Said he: “W-w-w-where you from?” I told him. “M-m-m-married or single?” he continued. “Single.” “S-s-s-say, did you ever c-c-court the wrr-wrr-wrt-wrong girl?” ~ ? Lord, yes, s-s-s-several times and fi-fi- finally married her.” comicbooks.com