Judge — September 24, 1921 — page 17: what you’re looking at

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

The Disenchanted By TOPPING GOODE ‘TOCKS seem to have touched ‘bottom, and now skirts are drop- ping; anyhow, the coutouriers of Paris announce lower levels in the near future. There has long been an affinity between high-water skirts and stocks of a high-water percent- age. From his station on the curb the Man in the Street pursues his study of the hosiery market, usually being found on the bear side. Speak- ing for this plain citizen, I say, let the skirts come down—down, down, down. There is plenty of room at the bottom. A preacher friend of mine arrived, at the time of the last reef in nether garments, at the stage of panic in which he delivered a hair-raising discourse from the text: “There is nothing covered that shall not be re- vealed, or hid that shall not be known.” The psychology of the plain man’s view is summed up in a quotation, uot directly from the hosiery market, but from English literature: “Give but a glimpse, and draws All that Grecian Venus was.” The diamond mine in Africa, for example, is more alluring to the lamb in the Street than the profitable glue factory around the corner. Imagina- tion, once lit up, can make a goddes:; out of a scrub-woman. We men are idealists, the most of us; the search for Beauty goes end- lessly on; at any moment, the most unexpected, in the most unpromising quarter, it may burst upon our vis- ion. That's w our lamps are for- ever lamping: why we are tireless observers of much that is ugly or at least without attraction. Recurring to the hosiery market: we have had .a coadjutor these many years in the vagrant, sportive breeze, which has no compunctions about frisking with the most de- corous of draper- ies and admitting sudden spot lights sans merci. Eu- gene Field, dwell- ing in tempest- uous Chicago, in an era of side- walk-s wee p- ing garments, once broke. forth: “Little children, Fancy Drawn by PAUL REILLY Farmer—Say, Mist B-B-BROKE HER HEART! Drawn by CHARLES L. GOELLER. GRINDING HIS TEETH WITH RAGE. let_ us be thankful for the wind!” Old Boreas and the whole family of Zephyrs were the allies of Beau- ty, for they revealed, at occasional intervals, with whims and reticences perfectly calculated to keep the mind of the idealist athrill, just enough. There is a psychological length, varying with the individual, at which the skirt is eloquent of exquisite pos- sibilities. There are feet, ankles, calves, which are poems. (A knee, as that wise observer, F. P. A. in- sists, is but a joint.) But these poems are only a little more plentiful than the molars in the ofal cavity of a hen. Yet a fleeting glimpse, a soup- con, or even a scrupulously regulated inch or two of Oh, Nix! or Peek-and- Peek, may conjure up a Venus di Medici, for the instant, out of a stumpy nurse maid. It is a long skirt that has no turn- to ffee our imaginations from the un- healthy strain which . enswaddling cerements placed upon it, set in. Up and down, and down and up, the jength has fluctuated, with the ebb and flow of the tides which course through the rue Saint Honoré. Meanwhile we have become wiser, and sadder, men. Much gossamer love-lines of hue and weave, even as the silken petals of flowers, has feasted our eyes. Color, but not line: where are the Cytherean contours of which Mystery used to whisper in our ears? No; we are now grim literalists. One soon learns to classify. There is, for example, the Doric type; the Tonic; the piano leg; the Frankie Bailey; the inverted ten-pin; the sawdust doll—but shucks! We might go on this way for pages. If there be poetry in any of these styles, make the most of it! Some day the art of make-up. which has wrought miracles with the upper or negative pole of the femin- ine form divine, will find its way down to the positive pole. (Actually. of late, the upper end has tended to compete for attention with the lower!) Every woman, then, will have—after ten-thirty or eleven a.m. —the grace of a Naiad, and the skirt can come down to the lowest—or up to the highest—terms. In fact, it may give place to a totally different type of garment. Eh, bien! The longer draperies will help us menfolk to forget grim facts. Every wearer will be a poten- tial Helen of Troy—at least from the knee down. Imaginations have been atrophying of late for lack of exer- ing, and some ten years ago the cise. uplift, as it were, which was destined Oil Field Scenery CS —~, By LAURA f; -_ \ KIRKWooD PLUMB \ aaa Son- ER, WHAT AILS YER CONTRAPTION! Motorist—On, I TRIED TO FORCE HER UP THE HILL AND I GUESS (Boo Hoo) I sust “What are these things which I see and hear, Mother dear? Mother — “The blind tigers crouching — he- hind the hill And the screech of the wild cats in the vale.” “Our lives!) Do you not fear, Mother dear?” ay! The blind tigers must lie low and still, While the wild cats pump bar- rels of kale.” comicbooks.com