Judge — November 12, 1921 — page 31: what you’re looking at

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

“I come almost shootin’ at you over yonder in that thicket, Boss, but I says to myself, ‘Nigger, there ain’t no such animal.’” Cutting Down Cobb (Continued from page 7) “If Cobb can’t do better than that,” she said she took his new volume away, “I shall abandon my hips to the course of nature.” Which reminds me of Philip Hale’s remark that any woman would be supremely happy if she could control the size of her hips. i resently I heard a sound some- thing between a guffaw, a snort and a sniffle. The guffaw, I found, was caused by the fact that Cobb is such a comical cuss that you can’t keep your face straight no matter what he’s writing about. The snort was caused by the fact that—according to my wife—the chief reason he grew so fat was because he ate too much, and when he took one-third off his menu, he took one-third off his per- son. The sniffle was because he says you can’t grow thin if your lips touch liquor—and my wife certainly does make marvelous home brew. Now, declared my wife, she doesn’t eat too much. She’s a very small eater (which I’m bound to confess is true). She can’t very well reduce the size of her portions, and it is quite, quite too much to ask her—she says—to reduce the size of her potions. As for cream, fresh butter, hot white bread and potatoes, she’s off them now. “It looks to me,” said I, “as if for you it was a choice between hips or hops.” “There’s no use in your trying to make jokes like Cobb,” she answered crossly, “because you can’t do it.” N a moment of illness (caused, per- haps, by lack of nourishment). ~S CHOCOLATtS FRENCH BONBONNIE CFA nhs C4 “tifthofoenue. at Sh Hes York - Cobb picked up an old McGuf- fey’s Fourth'> = Reader, and decided to write a de- fense of dime novels, which, he rightly says, really cost but a nickel. In “A Plea for Old Cap Collier,” he has a great deal of fun with “Ex- celsior,” and the imbecilic boy who stood on the burning deck, and young Lochinvar, who performed the aston- ishing feat of springing into his sad- dle after the lady was in place on the croupe, and various of the other stock selections with which most of us were taught to read. Cap Collier and Sure Shot Seth and Old Grizzly Adams and the rest of that brave tribe, he says, never did such foolish and im- possible things, and their deeds were never recorded in such hifalutin language. He calls the old nickul librury volumes logical, and says that their swift action and sure develop- ment answered a real need of boy- hood. This sounds well, superficially, and Cobb makes it amusing. But actu- ally it is pure hocum. The impos- sibility of Lochinvar’s feat of horse- manship matters nothing beside the rhythmic swing and gallop of the verses, their splendid verve, which is a priceless touchstone of taste in one’s early years. Besides, to call the old nickul librury books logical is absurd. They were utterly im- possible. “Treasure Island” is not 29 impossible. It has a logical develop- ment which does not violate the im- aginative conception of reality. The old cheap thrillers—and the new ones, which are movies—do violate it, and consequently are not stimulus but dope for the young imagination. However, the real fallacy into which Cobb falls is the idea that a boy must either be fed on a school reader or adime novel. Nonsense! The school readers are no more, and no less, im- portant than the school arithmetics and geographies. A boy’s real read- ing is in story books. I had a superb time in my boyhood, quite as good as Irvin Cobb did, and I don’t believe I read five Nick Carter or Cap Collier stories the entire time, not because I couldn’t, but because so much else that was far more interesting and far better was put in my way. The cheap Western movie is the adult answer to minds fed in early years on the nickul librury, in spite of the fact that Cobb made such a splendid recovery. To learn the values of true literature, you’ve got to begin young on true literature. There is no other way for the average mortal. Which goes to show that the un- restrained humorist can be a danger- ous teacher. One Tuirp Orr, A PLEA For OLD CaP COLLIER. By Irvin S. Cobb. Geo. H. Doran Co., N. Y. comicbooks.com