Judge, 1920-12-18 · page 13 of 32
Judge — December 18, 1920 — page 13: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# "The Killjoys" by Walt Mason This is a humorous story-poem satirizing self-righteous moralists who constantly criticize others' innocent pleasures. The illustration shows a man relaxing outdoors reading a novel while being pestered by a judgmental figure. The narrator describes repeatedly encountering preachy "killjoys" who condemn his smoking, novel-reading, and eating meat—claiming these habits lead to moral ruin. Each time one appears with sanctimonious warnings, the exasperated narrator eliminates him (feeds him to sharks, hangs him from a tree), only to have another replace him immediately. The satire targets 1910s-era moral crusaders and puritanical reformers who saw popular entertainments (detective fiction, tobacco, meat consumption) as gateways to crime and sin. Mason mocks their doom-saying by showing how absurdly pervasive and tedious such people are, and how their warnings ring hollow to anyone simply trying to enjoy life's modest pleasures. The joke: moralists are themselves the real nuisance to society.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
“AND ERE The Ki By War T's THROUGH WITH CHAPTER ONE A MOURNFUL GUY APPEARS lljoys Mason Illustration by Race Bartox SIT me down and light my pipe, and life's a grand sweet song; the weed L use is good and ripe, the pipe itself is strong. And when I smoke my cares depart, grief is an also ran; I have a calm and peaceful heart, | love my fellowman And when I've puffe a little while some freak comes up to Tobacco is a thing that’s vile!’ Oh, throw your pipe away! The fumes pollute the sunlit air, they make clean men sce red, they make the passing ladies swear, and wish that they were ! That weed will sap away your strength, and knock your u'll be put away at length in some cheap padded cell. Go, watch the throngs in Satan’s lair, the stokers as they stoke, and you will find they're toiling there because they learned to smoke.” This spicler bores and wearies me by making such remarks, and so I lead him to the sea and feed him to the sharks. But what's the use? When one is killed a dozen take his place; this ld with moralists is filled, who make it a disgrace. L hie me to a sylvan nook, to spend a restful day, and there J plunge into a book, a novel blithe and gay. And ere I'm through with Chapter One a mournful guy appears; his nose is red, his whiskers dun, his eyes are full of tears. say deac brain to Hoboken, and we a3 “Tt grieves me,” says this dismal hick, “to see your tastes so low; I say it grieves me to the quick, and also to the slow. ‘The world is full of helpful tomes, dashed off by scers sublime, yet people fill their sinful homes with tales of sleuths and crime. ‘The book you have is simply trash, its style and matter punk, and L would like to go and smash the press that prints such junk. “Go ask the people in the jail what set them going wrong, and they will say they read some tale such as you've brought along. [t filled them with a vain desire to murder, burn or steal, and so they set a church afire, and now, how tough they feel! “Oh, [could shed a peck of brine that you don’t wish to read the sermons of some learned divine, some poct gone to seed When on the scaffold you appear, the hangman at your side, you'll think of what I’m saying here,” the dismal duffer cried. [ led him to a sycamore, and hung him to a limb; of what avail? A dozen more soon took the place of him. I can not eat two luscious steaks but what some bore arrives and says that such a diet makes a ruin of our live He talks of sundry saintly men, attired in goatskin duds, who haunt the forest and the glen and live on barks and buds, By pampering the flesh, he says, we stunt the living soul; and while he’s talking through his fez I bolt my victuals whole. ‘Comicboo