Judge — June 11, 1921 — page 14: what you’re looking at

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

J Perrrron Maxwett, Editor and Tie Nervousness or BaseBate ASEBALL.” reports a business science committee, “increases the tension on the nerves, instead of relaxing them.” We knew this from the fans’ faces. These scientists may ha‘ e the whole theory of nerves ina nut and the complete philosophy of business in a speech but they have let the idea of baseball elude them. Baseball is a brain-dance, an eve-feast, an ear-full—a place to pull wide the throttle of the lungs and dip the rever ent mind in prayer for the home team The normal folks who denounce a base ball game as superfluous folly are those who can't g The initiated know that in the conte nplation of the moving picture they are lifted above the cares of this world They root for the ball and let the terres: trial ball stand still. Work, love, debt, taxes, friends and ingrowing corns are merely relative matters. The parabola of the ball, the ballistics of the batter, are not abstract hypotheses. facts with fire works revolving in sympathetic orbits. Baseball is our tournament—our gladia- torial Coliseum—our bloodless bull fight where with hair-trigger alertness the clivir of youth is brewed in an open-air bow! to make the sluggish sap stir. It is the in heritor of all the games played since the gods were boys. Man must have field games, or the fugacious years would fly away with } is zest and the indoors rust his liver. Persons oppoze | to baseball point to our healthy ancestors rs playing checkers. But you can not play cl eckers without a village barroom or a corner grocery Baseball was not framed to relax nerves. The runners are there to chase the blues away. The umpires are there to stir stag. nant spleens. The crowd is there to rollick with the ineffable halo of its boyhood memories —to rejuvenate itself by proxy to whoop out of its system all the bile it ‘eft at the office, that will have vanished when it reports for work tomorrow Cuancinc THe Sexes RENCH surgeons announce that it will shortly be as easy as fudge to change sex by the knife. Any woman wanting to UDG Art Director be a man, or any mana woman, may effect the transposition. The manner in which these Frenchmen are multiplying enjoy ment and mitigating monotony arouses our admiration. While we Amegicans are polishing theories of moral perfection these Paris scientists not only monkey-gland us into immortality, but into the eternal vacuum thrust monkey ideas to make our melancholy squeal with mirth, Even our February faces will chirp in all the brightness of a May morning as their minds grasp this proposition. If these Frenchmen can take the dry skin of science and stuff it with jokes, the feat is full of good augury to land crabs yearning for a wet environment. For the love of mock! The idea is not only succulent, but exquisite. We are on the verge of an age of magicians. Spinsters may change with bachelors. Man born of woman need not stay that way, but shuffle off intoachicken. As Dogberry said: “God's a good man,” and now we are called upon to leap down the ringing grooves of change! Metamorphosing the sexes is the cle nentary basis of other changes. A sales- man could have several tongues; a tele phone girl many es runner as many legs as a centipede; a gourmand as many stomachs as a cow; layers of brains could be superimposed on. professors; prize fighters could have twenty fists; and our enforcement officers scent with rows of hound-noses. Yet the new science should be con- trolled. It could take a pigmy and a harpy and make a Hyphen: a dish of eels and make a ward full of crooks. Our own scientists consider it bad form to speak all mirth and no matter. While not subscribing to the proposition that man was made of mud, they doubt whether he is made in Paris. They think that Nature and grammar have handed us the genders. But our flesh-tailors must ad- vertise if they want any jobs of ripping and stitching. For the French scalpelers have taken some hyperbolical and dia- bolical remnants, stuck them with super- natural ink, and made themselves an elephant of a press agent to trumpet their wonders. rs; a “ E \. Warpros, 4 Tarpinc Our Tourists HE hotel clerk has been delegated by some of the governments of Continer tal Europe to wring the roll of the Yankee tourist until it wilts. In the Tyrol the system would charge much as natives—the nine-tenths going to the government. In France tourists wil pay an extra six francs daily. Mong the Rhine the lusty habit of the eld robber barons revives for a little predatory exer trangers ten times as cise Many of us would like to plant our new shoes upon the onion beds of our ances tors. Our fresh jewels flash genially in the donjons of old castles, and the mind droops with rare sentiment over fields where the feet of armies have long grown cold. Human nature is charged with such feelings. But we object to being charged for them. We are willing to for our facts; but not for our emot Paying taxes to our own Government as a duty, we do not propose to pay taxes to other governments for fun This propensity to revert to piracy crops augurations and con. up occasionally in ventions here. Our home talent can comb guests fora rake-off with all the enthusiasm of a harvest hot But we have never viewed the process of forking us over like new-mown hay with éclat. It numbs desire, conduces to meditation, and con- firms a curiosity regarding the route back A prudent traveler, warned that a plot is hatched to pull his leg off, is going to hop in another direction. Our doughboys long ago recited reminiscences of the pans which baked their dough during their European itinerary. What was then whim has now become an avocation. To all ramblers from our drydock this is a wet blanket If the steamship companies and tourist agencies have any influence in the Conti nental chancellories now is the time to use it. In the meantime we may meditate upon the modern tendency to re-touch the tender parables of hospitality, and upon the kindly tongue of welcome which blandly assures us that if we will carry our cargo three thousand miles we shall be sacked and scuttled legally and thoroughly. comicbooks.com