Judge, 1922-01-07 · page 17 of 36
Judge — January 7, 1922 — page 17: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains satirical social commentary targeting an affectation-prone woman who frequents Greenwich Village (then the bohemian art district). The main piece mocks her pretentious adoption of intellectual culture—she praises famous thinkers like Whitman and Spencer without genuine understanding, owns unread leather-bound books as status symbols, and affects affected speech patterns (pronouncing "a" in "ask," gargling her "r's," saying "burled in url" for "boiled in oil"). The humor lies in exposing the gap between her cosmopolitan pose and her actual shallow materialism. She uses Latin-derived words merely because they "sound pretty," not from comprehension. The page also contains humor columns unrelated to this main satire, including a Leonardo da Vinci sketch about a child solving a riddle, and brief jokes about paint departments and golf. The overarching target is upper-middle-class pretension and consumerism dressed as cultural sophistication.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Drawn by H. J. PScK. Saw Them—as His She will dispose of Walt Whitman with an enthusiastic “He is just won- derful”; of Spencer, “Isn't he pro- found?” Should you express some adverse criticism, she will not differ with you, but will just give you a look of catholic tolerance which her friends know to be but timidity. She goes to Greenwich village, ad- Te “a Kodak Saw Them mires Ibsen, and pretends to be a student of palmistry. Her library consists of fifty or so Brentano’s leather-covered, gilt-edged, India paper volumes, with. the leaves in many places still uncut. She talks of some people as being supercilious and fastidious, not be- cause she really thinks them so, but because the woras are pretty-sounding. She is fond of using words of Latin derivation having a large number of syllables. She “Englishes” the “a” in ask and fast, and she gargles the “r.” She may meet your wife some day and tell her that she bought some de- licious fish which she “burled in url.” O Wise Young Judge! By Leonardo di Vinci I WAS an artist in my day. I painted a few good pictures—which, like myself, people agree to call immortal. Now I’m located in Purgatory, where, conditions being the same as in your world, I’m forced to grind out advertisements for the Machiavelli Hand-Organ Factory. But I have my famous model, my friends, and my son here with me, and can’t complain. Like all doting fathers and mothers, I think my boy the cleverest ever born. A day or two ago Machiavelli and I came upon him reading your magazine, of which all three of us are fond. “Son,” said I, “take the 10th letter of the alphabet, the 21st, the 4th, the 7th and the 5th, and tell me what they spell?” The boy, after running over the num- bers on his fingers, snappily replied: “Jay—yoo—de—gee—ee—that spells a better smile than Mona Lisa’s!” MORE THAN CAN BE EXPECTED The precocious child had been read- ing the reports of the World Confer- ence at Washington. “Father,” he asked, “what is a shan- tung?” “I give it up, my son,” replied the be- wildered parent. “I can’t keep track of all these newfangled soft drinks.” INDEFINITE INQUIRY Miss Pomade—Where is the paint department, please? Floor Walker—Face or house? eID sree £2 the nineteenth hole. It might be arranged that he give audience to delegations on the tees, make a speech or two on the greens, and arrange a meeting with a transplanted House of Representatives in the rough. — Under such an arrangement the bloc would give way to the cleek His Cabinet would meet him at comicbooks.com