Judge — October 29, 1921 — page 15: what you’re looking at

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

is “But since John Barleycorn cashed in we're stunned by crime and woe.” So Runs the World to my well-known abode; he long had toiled beneath the sky upon a dusty road. His shoes were split, his whiskers swished, he was a frowsy man; he looked like something you have fished from out the garbage can. “I’m agent for a book,” he said, while panting in distress, “that by all people should be read, on ‘How to Gain Success.’ ”” “Sit down,” I said, “and read your book, far from the crowded marts, and haply gain, by hook or crook, the secret it imparts. I haven’t seen a man this week who stood in greater need of that success all mortals seek, with great or lesser speed. Sit down and read that sickly trash, and breathe this wholesome air, while I mix up a hot bran mash that will your strength repair.” The irony of life, my friends, is always in our way; it never fails, it never ends, we see it every day. I seek the doctor in his lair, and tell him of my ills; for I have mumps and falling hair, and I am racked by T HERE came to-day a seedy guy By Watt Mason Illustration by RALPH BARTON chills; and I have hoof and mouth disease, and gout in thew and bone: oh, I have every choice disease a mod- est man may own. And I am hoping for relief in seeing Dr. Wax; I trust my anguish may be brief when he gets down to tacks. But Dr. Wax is all bunged up with ailments worse than mine, and he is swallowing a cup of wormwood mixed with brine. His-neck is in a plaster cast, his swollen feet on ice; and yet he says to me, “Dodgast, I'll cure you in a trice!” I know not what a trice may be, but when I see the doc, a poultice on his starboard knee, his feet unfit to walk, I wonder why he doesn’t strive to put himself in shape, e’en though his patients don’t survive, but boost the trade in crape. The irony of life prevails wherever men may be; we see it when we're cooped in jails, we see it when we’re free. They told us when they sprung the law prohibiting our beer that peace, such as we never saw, was surely drawing near. Crime would be ban- Away ished from the land, no ginks would rob or :; the prisons then would empty and, and cops might sleep all day. The Demon Rum caused all the crime with which the land was filled, and we'd all have a saintly time when Barleycorn was killed. But since John Barleycorn cashed in we’re stunned by crime and woe, and there are many brands of sin we never used to know. And every time I leave my shack to buy a testament, some piker shoots me in the back and doesn’t care a cent. And all the villai strong and fleet, come forth when it is dark, and men are shot in every street, and stabbed in every park. There never was so great a wave of crime and sin and shame: and Barleycorn is in his grave and cannot take the blame. The irony of life, alas, is always in our view; and wisdom is but sounding brass and tinkling cymbals, too. The barber is grotesquely bald who'd sell his tonic fine, to grow new lambrequins, so-called, upon this dome of mine. comicbooks.com