Judge — August 20, 1921 — page 34: what you’re looking at

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

What the Old Vet Said to Newlydry By BENJAMIN DE CASSERES The Decameron en Casserole. ORALS were lax in Phila- M delphia in those days. Fam- ily picnics were held in the “Family Entrance” parlors. You could lay anything from a penny to & prize pony on the spear in the gambling rooms on Locust Street. Six-year-old girls rode the high Columbia bicycles. Sunday school associations used to visit the Glou- cester race track—‘‘just to see the pretty ponies.” Four-year-olds used te “run the growler” for the Tired Business Papa. Acrobats walked the tight-rope strung from house to house balancing cases of Trimble whiskey on their noses, with a pousse-cafe for parapet. And other things. . . . You can see how wide open the Quaker Town was when I tell you that I was taken at the tender age of something-or-other to see ‘“Boccac- cio” at the old South Broad Street Theatre by an elderly spinster aunt. In that cast were DeWolf Hopper, just out of pinafores and dear old Digby Bell, now forever beyond the hooks of the Volstead joy-baiters. It was my first opera. But the next day I sneaked a copy of the im- mortal and delightfully immoral tales out of the public library, and I’ve been a Boccaccio fan ever since. Philadelphia has closed up since, but “The Decameron” will go on forever. Naturally, the title, “The New Decameron” (Robert McBride & Co.), intrigued (to use “Bob” Cham- bers’ fluffy word) me _ exceeding when it hit the reviewing table. Here’s a party of story-tellers stalled on a yacht outside the three-mile limit without a sud on board. They got to telling yarns. They are by various authors—a sort of “Decam- eron en Casserole.” Some of them are powerful, others just powerful, a few skid. Variety is the spice of this book. Quit It! TALKING about the association of ideas, as old Doc Einstein would say, I got thinking of schooners while reading a book on bar sinisters. From schooners to bars my thought floated airily to the word “froth,” and from “froth,” by one of those curious inverted shimmies of which my y brain is often guilty, the words “United States Navy” bobbed up. Was this last hitching up of ass tions—between “froth” and “navy”’—caused by the endless Daniels-Sims controversy? I leave it to Psyche Anal Siss, the great subconscious mouser. Every time our navy does some- thing somebody comes along and says we didn’t do it. Now, I think that Daniels, although a “dry,” did a pretty good wet job during the war. Neither Charlie Chaplin nor I could have done better. And I also think that Admiral Sims has got u big head. He never Sinn Feigns. But Daniels and Sims had to get into a bally snarl over How many quarts of water are there in the Atlantic Ocean and Should battleships be square-rigged or gallant boomed? Fancy that, Hedda! Can’t these navy senior wranglers be persuaded to take a shore leave once in a while and give us a chance to tend to our lawful business of sea rum running? porsert in Drawn by R. B. Futter. THAT SoutH Sea IsLaND NOVEL. 34 Bobs up Tracy Barrett Kittredge with a book (“Naval Lessons of thé Great War’; Doubleday, Page & Co.) that gives us the data, ver- batim and bullum of the whole raz- zoo. He who reads may run. I did. Let us have yeast! White's Sixteenth Homer. ‘PRE Grand March Struck up “Andaluzy Annie.” There was a rubber mat punch in the corner. A bottle labelled “Sal Hepatica” hung neck-foremost out of Col. Peyton’s pocket. Direful Doings were in the air. A cloud or two skirmished into po- sition in the Dun Heavens. It threatened to be David Wark Griffith's Monumental Moment. Kenneth Boyd loved Daphne Brainerd with a love that was more’n the love of the lovely Annabel Lee. Sing Toy had his pigtail combed pompadour and his eyebrows were marcelled. He was the Clate Lusk of China in Disguise. “Well, good-by!” bawled Kenneth as he whistled “La Donna e Mobile” to the West Wind. This was the beginning of the Cruel Misunder- standing. The Grand March played on. How could the G. M. know what was in the air? Could it be the door- mat punch? (“The Rose Dawn,” Stewart Edward White; Doubleday, Page & Co.). Well, anyhow, with a Truly Crea- tive Realism the story rolls into the scherzo obbligato dimension with oboe frills. Jimmy Carstairs (’mem- ber the name?) laid his case notes at the brogans of Daphne; but, alas end odz bunk! she was chloeing else- where that soir. Sing Toy’s pompa- aour contained a wireless apparatus among other things. George Scott got the signal at Aqueduct while he was fixing up the first race in the paddock. But it was too late. Arny Rothstein was already on his way te Chicago. Bates suddenly cackled. Bates was troubled with low visibility and the safety cut off his beauty pimple. But he intercepted the wireless and his brain rose to his ears. Everybody else is Masterfully Por- trayed. And Southern Chivalry !—it chivvles all through the book. No Shocks Listed “Why do they call that shop an ‘automobile laundry’?” “Probably because when they send your car back to you the tail light is ripped off or the fender’s gone.” Sweet Charity Beggar—Would you help a poor old man whose wife is out of work? PRESS OF WILLIAM GREEN, NEW YORE comicbooks.com