Judge, 1918-01-19 · page 12 of 28
Judge — January 19, 1918 — page 12: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This *Judge* page contains three satirical pieces reflecting early 20th-century attitudes: **"Peace Terms"** mocks a pedantic male student monopolizing library space with pseudo-intellectual rambling about multi-mooned planets and romance. The joke: a librarian shuts him up, and he petulantly steals the "pale student's" umbrella in retaliation—absurd pettiness presented as comeuppance. **"The Wager"** plays on sexist assumptions about women's cunning. A man bets he'll marry a woman who enjoys rain; he wins the bet but "loses" because she charges him for the umbrella. The punchline assumes women are inherently duplicitous—a "victory" becomes defeat through female trickery. **"A Kind Lady"** references WWI. A woman requests barbed wire supposedly to "knit sweaters" for German soldiers, implying women are foolishly sentimental about enemies. The satire targets both pacifist sentiment and feminine naïveté during wartime. All three reinforce period stereotypes: women as illogical, scheming, or overly sympathetic; men as intellectually superior but socially inept.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
PEACE TERMS “Oh Lord; I forgive mine enemies my trespasses against them!” woman were as devoid of beauty as an Eskimo spinster, her charms would be so magnified by eight moons and a warm sum- mer evening that some male would inevitably implore her to commit matrimony with him. “T will even wager that Jupiter is a planet on which love, romance and poetry run riot by night and by day. When Romeo was indulging in one of his most romantic passages with Juliet, he remarked to her: onder blessed moon I swear, silver all these fruit-tree tops—’ “Lady, b: That tips If cight moons had been tipping the fruit-tree tops with silver, Romeo would doubtless have emitted some poetry which would have been about 185 per w cent. more deathless than the above lines; while his swearing would have scorched the tips from Julict’s ears. Probably you recall those celebrated lines of the late J. Augustus Wade: “*Meet me by moonlight alone, And then I will tell you a tale Must be told by the moonlight alone In the grove by the end of the vale!’ You can well imagine that the tale would have been considerably more hectic if it could have been told by octuple moonlight. “Tcan conceive of only one unpleasant feature about an eight-mooned planet, and that is the unpleasant effect which such a large number of lunar bodies would have upon the mind of a person who was returning to his home in a somewhat petrified state from a banquet or the club or sitting up with a sick friend. I can well concei that he might be a trifle dazed by the enormous number of moons, and that he might even lose his sense of direc- tion. This, however, would be a purely minor considera- tion, and——”" At this juncture a library attendant touched Mr. Rinkle sharply on the shoulder and called his attenton to the sign which read: “Only Low Conversation Permitted in this Library.” The pale student at once turned faway, as though to show clearly that Mr. Rinkle was not his friend. So Mr. Rinkle sighed deeply, rose to his feet, picked up the silk umbrella belonging to the pale student, and stole softly, albeit a trifle deviously, from the room. THE WAGER J SHALL never bet with 2 woman again. You always lose when you bet with a woman. Even when you win, there's a catch in i She had leaned across the table, under the rose-shaded candles, telling me in a soft voice the sort of girl I would marry. Why does a woman always delight in doing that? She had about completed the enumeration of those qualities to which I was to find myself married some day. “You will ty a girl who does not like to walk in the rain,” she concluded. “You are wrong there,” I answered. “I shall marry a girl who does like to walk in the rain.” Her eyes danced. “Will you bet on it?” she asked. “Anything you like,” I agreed. “An umbrella, then,” she replied, and we parted. . . . . . . I have married the girl that I laid the bet with. She is a girl who likes to walk in the rain. So I won. She bought me the umbrella—and charged it to my account. I shall never bet with a woman again. | —By Lisle Bell. ‘ALL KinoS OF HARDWARE y A KIND LADY “Send me a dozen reels of this barbed wire.” ‘A dozen reels! Want to defend yourself against the German army?” No, I want to knit sweaters for "em!"