Judge, 1920-01-03 · page 18 of 36
Judge — January 3, 1920 — page 18: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains several short humorous anecdotes satirizing early 20th-century professional and domestic life. **Main cartoon**: Shows a young lawyer frantically performing an elaborate fake phone conversation to impress a potential client—only to discover the visitor is actually the telephone company installer. The joke mocks pretentious professionals who prioritize appearances over substance. **Other jokes** include: - A wife using League of Nations lectures to soothe her fretful baby - A man's lifelong inability to break the crawling habit learned as an infant - A father refusing his son's simple request while reading the newspaper - A final cartoon (French caption) about Parisians buying four closed cars as makeshift homes due to housing shortage The satirical point throughout: absurdity in modern life—whether professional desperation, male absent-mindedness, housing crises, or the gap between how people present themselves versus reality. The humor relies on recognizing common human foibles and social pretensions of the era.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Mnemonics in Need A Bit Premature—A successful old lawyer tells the following story anent the beginning of his professional life: “I just had installed myself in my office,” he said, “had put in a phone and had preened myself for the first client who might come along when through the glass of my door I saw a shadow. Yes, it was doubtless some one to see me Picture me, then, grabbing the nice shiny receiver of my new phone and plunging into an imaginary conversation It ran something like this Mr. S.,’ I was saying as the stranger entered the office, ‘I'll attend to that corporation matter for you. Mr. J. had me on the phone this morning and anted me to settle a damage suit, but I had to put him off as I was too busy with other cases. But I'll manage to sandwich your case in between the others somehow. Yes. Yes. All right, good-by.’ “Being sure, then, that I had duly impressed my prospective client, I hung up the receiver and tumed to him. ““Excuse me, sir,’ the man said, ‘but I'm from the telephone company. I’ve come to connect your instrument Houston Post. 18 A Soothing Discourse—* Charley ar,” said young Mrs. Torkins you please go on explaining the Lea of Nations to me?” “Why, I've talked by the hour on that every night for the last week “Yes. And just as soon as you begin baby stops fretting and drops off to sleep." —Washington Star His Ancient Hab hat’s matter Smith? id Brown Hasn't he any spirit or backbone at all?” “No,” replied Jones. “He leamed to crawl when he was a baby and he never with —Cincin seems to have gotten over it.” uirer Simple Enough—Slater was ab sorbed in the evening when his young son’s cry him, “What is that child howling for now?” he demanded, irascibly. “He wants his own way,” said Mrs. newspaper g disturbed ” argued Slater, absent-minded as his eye fell on a particularly inter it’s his, why don’t you let him have it?”—London Tit-Bits The Traffic Cop Will Be Janitor “Couldn't find any place to live, so we '—Le Rire have just bought four closed cars.’ (Paris), comicbooks.com