Judge — April 17, 1920 — page 5: what you’re looking at

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

\ Worip The Man. Nua Her Own From By Vainis Parker Borner Po is now the year 1930. In February, 1920, 1 Ellis Parker Butler—announced my intention of becoming a candidate for the office of President of the United States on the platform * Prohibit everything but mush and milk” and prepared t make a violent campaign for the nomination, spending money like water up to the sum of $3.73, and spendi talk 10 an unlimited amount. On March ist, 1920, | began a tour of the United States in my own behalf, making speeches and telling the voters the advantages that would accrue to the nation if the government was placed in my hands and everything but mush and milk prohibited. © Wherever } went IT was received with tremendous bursts of en- thusiasm, and it soon became evident that—if nothing intervened would carry the Republican and Demo- cratic National Conventions on the first ballot and be- come the only candidate for the Presidency. On April ist, 1920, having spoken to an enthralled audience at St eph, Mo., | was en route to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in my palatial flivver, and “had just stopped to mend the radiator with a wad of chewing- gum, when the car s surrounded by masked men, and I into a de My first thought was that these men were emissaries of the Anti-prohibition Party—those who wished to permit our fair land to continue to wallow in its dis- graceful and deadly habits of using tea, coffee, tobacco, stewed prunes and other horrid things—and that they hoped, by making away with me, to make possible the nomination of some sodden user of cocoa. The words they spoke soon let me know this was not the fact. I was in the hands of a far more desperate crew. These were men anyered and enraged because I refused to sO 10 spea was boun ] gagged and carried ‘The Log of a Lost Soul. demand the prohibition of mush and milk in additier to everythifg else, and willing to go to any length to get me outof the way. ‘They hated my liberal attitude. They led me to where a huge platform was erected in the wood, with a steel arm half a mile long, bent back and fastened with a single thick cable. On the end of this I was laid, and one of the masked men stood Je me with an axe. *Butler,” he said id te me, “you may think Pigs is ss, but in abe ta minute are going to discover apults is Catapults. these words he tore the bandage from around my eyes and I saw that there had been erected on the brow of a hill about half a mile distant a target about the size of the side of a barn, with rings numbered fron a large black bullseye in the centre. “Georg one of the masked men said, “before we shoot him off, f us ought to go over to the target and be there to sce whether he hits the bullseye or not.” “No, Henry,” the other said. “That ain't neces- sary. He'll make a splosh when he hits.” “All right, George, shall | chop?” “Yes, go ahead and chop, Henry.’ The axe was raised and fell, severing the cable. In- stanuy T sped at frightful speed through the air. They were poor marksmen, those men. [ missed the top of the target by ten feet and went on up and up and uj I saw Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana and the Gulf o' Mexico flash by below me. I was over South America when I reached the apex of my trajectory, and as I neared the ground I saw a large stone mountain just ahead of me on which was painted “Patagonia—Reduce Speed venty-fice Miles per Minute.’ The next moment | hit the large stone mountain. Luckily, | hit it with the top of my head or | might have been sevérely injured 110.9, and me comicbooks.com