Judge — October 15, 1921 — page 5: what you’re looking at

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

The Medicine Bawl. The Love Affair of a Fly HE Federated League of Bow- T Legged Women had passed its 103rd resolution condemning short skirts. But Betsy Butter- bouncer had not voted. She was still uncertain whether to go to a hos- pital and have her knees broken and then remoulded nearer to her heart’s desire, or keep her shape with the majority. The fact we , somehow, her heart was not in her legs to-day. She was concerned with higher things. Betsy secretly longed to be a Steeple Jack. To be sure, she was seventy-seven years old, and weighed almost 300 pounds in her rolled-down stockings. But women, she felt, should aspire— they should go to the top. Yet all her grandchildren objected. Somehow, they couldn’t bear to think of her crawling ‘round the tops of tall, Gothic spires. It made them nervous. They were afraid she might not fall off. For Mrs. Butterbouncer was rich. She was a widow. If they could prevent her from making a fool of herself with some movie actor or college boy, they would come in for millions. And they would come in in a hurry And so that is why, in the dark of the moon, Betsy Butterbouncer was frequently found amongst those mi: By Gererr Burcess ing. No, she was not abed with in furiated tonsils, as her grandchildren fondly weened. In her new Swiss mountain climbing costume, she was practising, alone—all alone—on the little Methodist church around the corner. Towards the upper part of the steeple where it was plain shin- work, she found her bow-legs came in ve handy. In a few weeks Mrs. Butterbouncer was almost a professional. Nobody knew it, because she worked only at night, when few people look for fat women on steeples. They are ex- pected to be home eating ice cream and candy. After she had mastered the Methodist church, she tried a Baptist, and found it wasn’t so much harder, after all. The Presbyterian took more of her wind and her knickers, but she persisted, and at last tackled a High Church Episcopal. Nothing now was left to her lofty ambition but a real Roman Catholic cathedral, with twin spires. And so, one night, she set out, in her new green costume, with a feather in her hat and a coil of rope and a few yeast cakes to give her courage. It was a Tuesday night, and it was raining. But she would reign, too, to-night—the Queen of Steeple Janes! Now, let us tactfully change the subject. No one would ever suspect Mr. Mural of being anything unusual. He was, indeed, so very ordinary that most people took him for some fa- mous dramatist Except when he opened his purse, it n’t stuffed with $1,000 bills: Ale no—only fine cut chewing tobacco. Moe was Mr. Mural’s preliminary name, and, in his peanut derby and red sus- penders, he looked it. All his life he had had one superb ambition. He wanted to Get Excited 3ut heaven, and an entire lack of any real nervous system, had forbade. No matter what happened, fire, earth- quake or flood, he was as calm as an undertaker. He had been scalped by ticket-sellers, he had lost four fingers off his best kid gloves, he had gone al- most blind eating wood-alcohol, but he never turned a hair. In his search for excitement he had enlisted in the eat World War. But even as a Commissary’s clerk, he found no thrill He had been a dummy for Tom Mix and D. Fairbanks, but no- body could throw him off a cliff hard enough to increase his blood pressure. And so Moe in despair became a Human Fly. comicbooks.com