Judge — October 4, 1919 — page 5: what you’re looking at

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

Author of “Nonsense Novels,” “ Illustration by UNDERSTAND that we are passing through a “wav One has only to read the columns of the current press to be certain of it. The only trouble that I find is to know just what kind of a wave is it that we are passing through. To begin with, it is being pretty generally remarked that just now we are passing through a wave of social discontent which disturbs all wages and prices. We shall, I understand, come up pr-sently on the other side of it. The rising price of food, therefore, is not a thing that we need worry about. It is simply a wave, just one of those waves of high food that come and pass. It will be all right as soon as we come up again. We are also, so I gather from all the police reports of all our large cities, passing through a wave of crime. Innocent people are being shot upon the streets in open daylight—you know those innocent people with ‘the big, broad, open faces? Well, they’re shooting them. I was worried about this till I realized that the thing was just one of those crime waves that sweep along every now and then. We shall come clean through it and up on the other side, and then the people who shot all these innocent people will feel sorry. And at this very same moment we are being swept, so all the clergy assure us, by a wave of agnosticism. This is nasty. And it seems especially bad luck to hit it at the same time as when we are going through the crime wave. They say this wave of agnosticism is being felt everywhere. Even the farmers are getting it. I read the other day of how a farmer out in Iowa threw his copy of Moody and Sankey’s hymns into the Wa- bash, and then threw his harmonicon after it. But per- Leacock Behin Lauren Stout haps this was only part of the new musical wave that is sweeping the country: the man appears to have said that the tempo of the harmonicon was awful. I am not sure that it was the Wabash, but, in a way, that is immaterial. They say also that we are going through a wave of immorali haven’t been able to find this, myself. They say it is chiefly at the seaside resorts. But some- how I haven't been able to hit it. We are in a wave, too, of financial inflation. This is a fearful thing. The currency is inflated, the na- tional debt is inflated, everything is inflated. I notice every time I go to New York how awfully inflated all the people look. And it’s dreadful to think of these yeggmen and thugmen of the crime wave moving round among the people inflated by the financial wa and cracking them.over the head with bits of gas-pipe. It seems an awful world. And they say the police simply look on. I read the other day of how—and this was in open daylight—one of those motor-thug-gun- men deliberately ran over a bank cashier right outside his own bank—ran over him three or four times. The police did nothing. ‘They said they had no right to interfere as long as he didn’t park on him. That’s forbidden. Then there’s the luxury wave, and the prohibition wave, and the wave of woman’s rights and feminism. It’s a good thing they’re only waves. Otherwise we might feel worried. But for my own part I shall be glad when we bob through and come up in the quiet white foam on the other side. icomicbooks=com