Judge — September 3, 1921 — page 11: what you’re looking at

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

ae or ne a Pity the Paper-Clip By FaiRFAX D. DOWNEY LEFT the factory where I was I born in company with ninety- nine brothers. Our motto was, “Hold fast.” First of all, I slipped together the pages of a schoolboy’s theme. The teacher read it and handed it back to the boy. “This lacks unity and co- herence,” she said. It was my first failure. The teach- er used me to fas- ten to her report a request for an in- crease in pay. Poor girl, she needed it! But one of the school-board mem- bers wrote back that such a step was not then consistent with the board’s policies. I had not made good. The school-board member, who was a lawyer, collected the sheets of a bulky brief by my aid. He lost the case. It next became my duty to clasp a rejection slip to a returned manu- ‘cript. The young author upbraided me bitterly. The editor immediately dispatched me in charge of a cor- rected copy of an income tax return. I was sent back to the editor, with a letter which read: “You have made an error. You owe $21.87 more.” I next drifted into the hands of a little blond stenographer. She seized me, unbent me and shaped me into a hairpin. At last I was successful! But, alas! it is plain I was born under a malign star. I just heard her say she was going to bob it! Hair vs. Efficiency By Sopuie E, REDFORD HY all this fuss about hair? Is the business world held in its obit by capillary attraction? One would think so to hear all this racket ubout bobbed hair. An employer may have a cranium which is flat, barren, as sterile as the Sahara, or it may stand smooth and shining, dome-like, as does a Matter- horn, with only some wayward wart upon its summit like a golf ball poised for the putting. The employee must look at it with loyal respect and be serious minded at its approach. Or he may be- long to an equal- ly disconcerting species, where a man parts his hair longitudinally on a given meridian somewhere in the antipodes, which wavers like an iso- UV Not Long Ago By GEORGE BANCROFT DUREN N OT long ago, Five years or so, I had a fierce antipathy For Dresden china girls—to me They were but senseless, painted things Whose life blood was engagement rings. Not long ago, Five years or so, I scorned the strong athletic jane, Whose antics only gave me pain, I loathed her muscle and her brawn, And passed her by with stifled yawn. Not long ago, Five years or so, I simply hated and abhorred The learned girl—I was so bored At conversations that she brewed That my replies were often rude. Not long ago, Five years or so, I acted thus in ignorance; For now for just one single glance From those who once I treated so, I'd squander all my _ hard-earned dough. But now it’s they who pass me by: I am an atom in their eye, The laugh’s on me, | get the air, Since age has robbed me of my hair. thermal line, crosses the equator and reappers on a desolate waste near the north pole, as it were, with here and there a scraggy hermit growth to- ward the occident, not unlike the last effort of vegetation just below the timber line on Pike’s Peak. Then there is the aura-style, the halo-like mode, which is oftenest of pale, leonine tints, reminding one of an unused racecourse that had grown up to thistles and rag weeds, in an irregular sort of perimeter. This sort of hair lowers the average of service, affecting also greatly the office morale. There’s the man with a wig. It is of course, his business, but the en- tire question of hair being imperti- nent, but momentous, indulgence is craved in behalf of the comptometer operator, for with her trained math- ematical mind she cannot help a cer- tain abstraction when she sees a head of this kind. Nor can she help spec- ulating if, as the good book says, the hairs of our heads are numbered, Surgery a la Mode By HERMAN POMERANZ AY dawned. Clare arose from the rack of her bed, and watched the horizon flash crimson. The stillness of the room was broken only by her husband’s ster- torous breathing. The woman was in the throes of a grim resolve. The idea had obsessed her for months. It was with her in the leaden hours of the night; it stalked with her even to the festive board. The day of days finally arrived. She dressed si- Jently in profound agitation, and slowly left the house unseen. As she walked, she began the dol- orous probing of her soul—‘What would her husband think and say?” Heavens! The fury that would be his, when he had discovered all! Ah! how her mind went back to the day in the copse, at dusk, with Gilbert. Her bare feet were in the lake—‘fit for Phidias’ mallet”—and her hair—‘Melisande’s’—he had said—‘streaming in the wind!” Now she walked more rapidly, her heart beating a wild tattoo against her ribs as she approached the brown house so big, so silent; a fitting scene for so strange a rendezvous. The door was opened. She glided in. ‘Two hours elapsed. ‘Then Clare came out. Her hair was bobbed! how the Lord of Creation can keep tab on wigs. We grant that the same problem has confronted the record ing angel more than once in the mat ter of transformations, rats, detach- al e curls and the like, of my lady’s co.fure; but the “tired business man” must leave that to the de- partment of the universe to which it has been assigned, as his employee has had to do in regard to him. There’s a type of Big Boss who calls a girl to his desk, runs his hands through his magnificent fore- lock and eyeing her from beneath shaggy eyebrows, scares the poor child half to death by that first stac- cato, “What ’xper’nce have you had? ! ! !” Wom- an has been forced to adopt freakish fads to give the majesty of big bus-, iness a counter-* blow, maintaining her equilibrium by (Cont’d on p. 33.) comicbooks.com