Judge, 1922-01-28 · page 23 of 36
Judge — January 28, 1922 — page 23: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a sequential comic strip about courtship and revenge. Charlie, apparently a young suitor of modest means, attempts to court a farmer's daughter with flowers. The girl's protective father responds violently with buckshot—reflecting period attitudes about daughters and male callers. Charlie's revenge is absurdist: he paints the farmer's mule to resemble a zebra, creating a disguised animal the farmer doesn't recognize. The mule then chases the farmer up a tree, trapping him overnight. The humor relies on the pun in the title—the farmer literally fails to "know his own mule" when disguised. The comic satirizes rural courtship customs, paternal overprotectiveness, and the foolishness of both the aggressive father and the prankster suitor. The exaggerated consequences (extended tree-sitting) emphasize the joke's absurdity rather than realistic consequence.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
It’s a Wise Farmer Knows His Own Mule Charlie takes a beautiful bouquet to his girl. Her father sees them, and gives Charlie a dose of buckshot. Charlie gets even by painting the old mule to look like a zebra, and it chases the poor farmer up a tree and keeps him there all night. 2