Judge — July 23, 1921 — page 20: what you’re looking at

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

Perriton Maxwett, Editor and Art Director J. A. Watpron, Associate Editor THE Pirates ON THE MAIN UR own staid Government has re- vived romance. It explains the vanishing American ships with a lovely yarn of piracy—as yet unofficial in positiveness. Thus the bark of mid-sum- mer monotony is tossed out upon the tempest of conjecture—and we do not know whether to wink at the joke or gasp at the fact. Confronted with a supposition, each ponderer is free to construct an apparition after his own heart. Shadows of fog and spirits of mist, nursery tales and boyhood dreams, are the materials, and we drape our ghost with terrors until it drips with villainy like a profiteer brandishing a cleaver. The waves bouncing with pirates ought to be charming news. Assuming that these robbers are our fellow-citizens, we must conclude that they were driven from our midst by falling markets. Most of us cannot escape. These are the rabbits who saw the trap. The Attorney-General’s deputies in the last administration per- spired with vigilant exertion, denounced predatory habits, waved writs, and al- though no miscreant was caught, scared some of the highbinders off the roads. They will not return until flush times—or until the present administration stops rattling handcufis—and any booty they might smuggle in would shrivel to small change. If some of these pirates have fled from the income tax, they have fled in vain. Sooner or later they will be seized by re- morse, or boast of their prowess to their wives, or strut too proudly. Then a dread- ful summons will lay them prostrate at the fect of the Collector, whose merciless eye pierces to the springs of deceit and whose smile petrifies a subterfuge at its birth. Piracy is one of the primal instincts of man. In our old days, when we could scalp Indians, this instinct had free scope. Then our adventurers learned how to skin us alive within the law. Suddenly the slump and the taxes reached forth inex- orable talons—but they escaped to revel in rapine on the high seas. We now see the blessing of hard times, and the wisdom of taxes and prohibition, and if we can only keep open communications with the buc- caneers we may even rid ourselves of a few taxicab drivers and vacation hotelkeepers. An AsTOUNDING SUGGESTION RESIDENT HARDING, _ having shaken hands with fifteen hundred delegates to the American Homeopathic Convention, aroused such compassion that the Convention became entangled in debate over the proposition that our Pres- idents be interdicted from shaking hands. The debate collapsed under the overpower- ing weight of a stupendous innovation. The comet of genius flashed its gorgeous tail in blinding spray. A delegate arose and suggested that the President be al- lowed to mind his own business! Mind his own business! The most formidable foe to public and private peace wilted like a stricken thing. Who would inflame the proletariat—who would harass public men—who would make inquisitive brain-pans quiver like bowls of jelly—who would blow blasts of declamation before the hosts of reform—who would stir quietude into fermentation and whirl windmillish arms in scareheads—were everybody permitted to mind his own business? Bladders subside at the alarming idea. There is a frightful shrinkage in gas-tanks. All the inner-tubes in the buzzing wheels of busybodies sag with punctures. The vast propaganda rushing to and fro stalls in flatulence. Afar off, in an obscure place, a faint sound of applause reaches the ear. It comes from those who hail this discovery in metaphysics, and who demand that a monument be raised to the unknown del- egate. Those pedants who have looked in the ancient books say, however, that we have, through ages of peeping and carping, accumulated such a mass of other people’s business that we may never be able to mind our own. Yet the idea deserves diffusion. It may, in time, be uplifted as noble. It seems to have caught the tone of some well-bred caste now extinct.. The murmur of ap- plause indicates a partiality that may grow into popularity in favor of the sim- 20 plicity of a courtlier generation, and we can contemplate with sprightliness the possi- bility of entwining “Mind Your Own Business” among our National mottoes. Tat PerrumeD Kiss EACH-BLOOM, mustard-seed, moths and Mary Garden! The women’s lips are poisoned. The skirts are no longer and the kissing will be shorter. Scientific police report that the whole sex carries knock-out drops in its mouth. The, lip- stick is strychnine. The incense of the temple of love is spiced venom. The wor- shipper at the shrine is eating chemicals which affect the heart and the brain, cause blindness and fantastic dreams. We may expect any day to see maidens with red lips jailed for violating the Pure Food Law, and the men jugged as drug- fiends. Then we shall perceive the pur- pose of this malevolent propaganda. The encroachments of science are devilish sly, and masked under the guise of solicitude. These wizards really seek to purge love— to sterilize it and formaldehyde it—and under pretense of fumigating it, to fondle it themse There is no doubt whatever about the ultimate intent of the Boards of Health to usurp the powers of social and political government. They pose as the pri councillors and guardians of the commu ty. But they insidiously sow suspicion, and when the reputation of everything and everybody is ruined, and their own pres- cience is paramount, they will put their feet on our necks and their arms around our beauties. If this accusation be part of a moral crusade to make us as chaste as ice, we are willing to let the wild bees sip all the honeysuckle. But it is too sudden. It shows the horns of envy and strikes at the roots of reason like a kill-joy with an axe. We are ready to compromise, and sur- render our curled darlings to analysis— properly chaperoned. Let the mouth of every nymph be pasteurized. But we stand on our rights under the Constitution, and after the Boards of Health have washed the women’s faces we will make an indepen- dent and purely technical test to see if they did a thorough job.