Judge — September 24, 1921 — page 20: what you’re looking at

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

DovcLas No AGE LIMIT ON MARRIAC R. HARDING did not hire out as a stalking horse for Hymen, but the old single-footers are looking up since the father of the President married. The philosophy of the lone- some trail nearly took the count, and our entire unmarried grandparent- age seems to be taking a second look at happiness through Dr. Harding's spectacles. A hundred thousand widowers are mildewing in melancholy who ought to be mellowing in marriage. A mil- lion bachelors, with the morals of ascetics and the manners of misan- thropes, ought to be dipped in do- mestic vivacity. Example stirs de- sire. Every zestful sage who invests himself with a wife not only warms the cockles of universal joy, but does a high public service. Youth is the time for high fevers. But love in its mild forms should throb until our dotage. Down with celibacy and austerity! Let us climb the perfumed stairs of the heart, ring the bells and blow the horns, tickle Cupid with a gray hair and raise the age limit for sweethearts. Make the pageant glow by being a busy actor in the play. THE TONGUE OF THE CONFERENCE HE French are unamiable over the reported adoption of English as the tongue of the Conference. They are dolorous over their passing pres- tige, and a trifle truculent over the aggressiv $ i pity th vocabulary upon a small incident. The Conference will be in an Eng- lish-speaking country. Its concern will be with continents touched by the English-speaking sphere. It will discuss those international principles which have been the peculiar prov- ince of the political philosophy of English-speaking nations. It does not propose to insinuate disarmament as an European idea, but to offer a great . Cooke, Eviot Keen, J. A. WALDRON, principle to universal reason in sim- ple form. While English may be the official instrument in Washington, the recep- tions will still tintillate Gallicisms like congresses of Talleyrands, and diplomacy will not relinquish its tra- ditions without gorgeous social illu- minations. But, while French fits the minor colloquial stage, it is not the language of the new worlds of power. SWEET STATISTICS TH E candy statistics are astound- ing. Melancholy economists pine at the spectacle of a nation candy-chewing itself to tatters. We individual chews ten dollars of are told with bated breath that each wealth annually, frittering other hoards in repair work at the dentists. Calm benevolence, however, is de- lighted at the prodigious sum of rapture, cheerfulness and content- ment interpreted by the saccharine tabulations, and the imagination of all reasonable creatures is captivated by the clapping of innumerable in- nocent hands and the fond endear- ments around the mounds of marsh- mallows and taffy. Excluding the masterpieces of do- mestic architecture, the fudge con- sumed in the United States, if made into bricks, would build a wall two feet thick, 98,767 miles, 9 rods long, and high enough for neighborly gos- sip. Piled end to end in pound boxes, the mixed chocolates would reach from Bangor, Me., to Venus, which is where the goddess of love lives. Working steadily with tongs, one normal maiden would unload 237,896 carload lots of bon bons in 93,205 years. Were all the caramels strung in a strand, with a freshman and a co-ed chewing steadily toward each other, it would be seven billion years, three months and six days before they would kiss in the middle. Melted into a river three miles wide and three thousand miles long 20 Editors. the molasses brittle would float every child to school in boats of peanuts. The stick candy would fabricate 10,- 789,411 nightsticks for policewomen, or 765,276 greased poles for picnics. The nougat, made into inch rope. perpendicular, would require a climb of three million years, nine months and four days, before a stenographer used to dancing could reach the end to see if there were a man to escort her home. But statisties are dry. THE RUSSIAN FAMINE \ E have resumed relations with Russia. The news touched our hearts. The Bolsheviki cracked all our prejudices and crushed all our arguments against their government by dying under it. We now know the truth about Russia. We have no- ticed it in our own fields before. For we, too, have headstrong neighbors, deluded and unlucky, who at last be- come just broken fellow-mortals to be mended. Americans can always give some- thing for nothing very kindly be- cause we know the prodigal type which gets nothing for something. But we seldom hurt anybody’s feel- ings by reminiscences. If a corner is dark, we have lamps to lend. We light fires in an icehouse, cook a meal and sing a hymn—and if we mention old forecasts it is only for conversation. As Good Samaritans we are trained to the melting mood. Our uplift spirit would pull the bottom out of a despondent well. Our sur- plus would make the granary of Joseph look like light lunch for a canary. Some ill-bred person might absently repeat in Mosco “A man’s belly shall be satisfied with the fruit of his mouth.” But this would be un- official. Our tongues will be still. our hands lavish, and, having been a good fairy to some other nations, when we have our own famine, per- haps they will bring their cornuco- pias to us. comicbooks.com