Judge, 1920-08-07 · page 13 of 36
Judge — August 7, 1920 — page 13: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Jimson Comes to Life: Context & Meaning This is the opening of a short story illustrated by Lawrence Fellows for *Judge* magazine, not a political cartoon. The narrative introduces Jimson, a traveling salesman of lingerie who embodies a social contradiction: confident and eloquent in business, yet shy and homely around women. His jealous wife suspects infidelity based on his sample cases. The story's setup—Jimson forced to share a day coach seat with an attractive young woman—establishes a premise playing on period anxieties about travel, propriety, and marital fidelity. For contemporary readers, this reflected real concerns about the impropriety of strangers sharing close quarters on trains. The accompanying illustration depicts the awkward encounter, with other passengers observing. The humor derives from Jimson's internal contradiction: he wishes to appear as a confident "cavalier" but is fundamentally timid and homely, creating comic tension.
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Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
| be a 4 | VFELIOW/, “Ty Fete iro Jr tac, Borrom Urwarn” Jimson Comes to Life By J. A. Watprox Hlustration by Lawrence: Fetrows t traveler, was a IMSON, a star salesman and a cons! human paradox. His temperamental contradictions were amazing. His line was lingerie. Fluent and sanguine in a business way’, he was tot tied and bashful where women were concerned. His diffi nding jest among men, and women dence with the sex was a st whom he met in the course of business tcok the cue and jollied him, only to emphasize his failing. His friends wondered how he ever came to marry, but that secret was Mrs. Jimson’s Most traveling salesmen, as Jimson knew, are unafraid of women, and he knew also that quite a percentage of them were persistent philanderers. Secretly Jimson wished he might. be like these chaps. Really he would have enjoyed a reputation as a cavalier. He was very homely. and cognizant of it, and this consciousness increased his shyness and timidity when business did not dominate his mind and action. His success as a sales man in the circumstances was a mystery. but there is something mysterious about the success of most perscns. Mrs. Jimson, who was fond of her husband, thought him an Adonis, and was very jealous of him. She was even suspicious of the samples of lingerie he carried. Sometimes before he started on a trip she would find in his personal bag. which she always rearranged to make sure that he had in it all the little things he needed, inty garment that had been put there at the eleventh hour. His sample cases had been packed at headquarters, he would explain, and this isol. 1 garment was a new model that must be taken on the journ This happened often, but his explanation always had to be repeated, and it became an old story Coming home from a very successful trip one day, Jimson could not get a place ina Pullman. He was obliged to take the only empty seat in a day coach by the side of a young and very pretty woman, who was bewailing her own misfortune in being so placed. She never before had traveled in a day coach, she said. The young woman’s impedimenta filled the rack overhead, and Jimson crowded his bag in with his feet. His sample cases had been checked comicbooks.com