Judge, 1918-06-22 · page 12 of 36
Judge — June 22, 1918 — page 12: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
The page contains three distinct pieces: **"Strangers"** (top): An allegorical dialogue where "Consensus of Opinion"—a personified, self-important figure representing conventional wisdom—encounters "The Other Person," revealed to be "Truth." The satire mocks how established consensus resists questioning and becomes defensive when challenged, suggesting that mainstream opinion is fundamentally uncomfortable with truth-telling. **"A Mystery"** (middle right): Rural satire about "Hamp Flatt," whose wife is overworked (splitting wood, cooking, childcare, farm labor) yet blamed for being "puny" and potentially needing a doctor. The joke exposes the absurdity of male indifference to women's exhaustion from impossible domestic burdens. **Bottom cartoon** (by John Conacher): Children playing soldiers imagine they're the Kaiser and Crown Prince "goin' to their doom"—likely referencing World War I, with children's war games reflecting real military conflict and anticipated enemy defeat. All three pieces use humor to critique: institutional complacency, gender injustice, and wartime sentiment.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Strangers By T. L. M. HE Consensus of Opin- I ion moved uneasily. He was a very ortho- dox Consensus of Opinion. “T feel like a hypocrite,” he said to himself, “yet this is indubitably wrong. For am I not solid, am I not a Consensus? I was born to the purple. I must be right. The Other Person, who had suddenly and so gra- ciously approached, eyed him gently. The Consensus of Opinion, in spite of himself, blushed. “T am thoroughly respectable,” he asseverated. “Compounded of somewhat divergent elements, yet I am One. You must admit,” he declared, “that I am One.” “Are you indeed,” replied the Other Person. “The world accepts me without question,” pro- tested the Consensus of Opinion, although for the life of him, he felt he could not tell why a sense of shame should rise at his own desire to explain himself. sh A Carbonewte by J. K. Bryans soon as I reach Chicago. so soon as that. 5 Mr. Peck—Good-bye, my dear! I'll telegraph you as Mrs. Peck—Don’t bother, dear. “There is absolutely noth- ing the matter with me!” he asserted. “I am quite all right. Don’t you know that I am quite all right?” he questioned directly, not without ‘a touch of pathos. The Other Person bowed silently and prepared to move on. If the Consensus of Opin- ion could only have stopped there! Buta sense of his own guilt moved him to inquire: “*Who are you?” “T am Truth,” said the Other Person, with a quiet, magnanimous smile. I won't need money A Mystery “EV AMP FLATT is out of luck,” commented Gap Johnson, of Rumpus Ridge, Ark. ‘His wife is right puny. He says that all in the livin’ world she has to do is to split and tote in the wood, cook the meals, red up the house, keer for nine children and her paralyzed pappy-in-law, milk the cows, slop the hogs, sew and mend a little, and such as that, and yet she ’pears to be all broke down. Hamp says he don’t know what in the nation is the matter with her and that if she don’t peart up pretty soon he believes he'll send for the doctor.” “Why! — Bless my soul! What's all this?” “It’s the Kaiser an’ the Crown Prince, sir, goin’ to their doom.”