Judge — October 28, 1922 — page 8: what you’re looking at

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

The season for mis- taken identity Open Seasons Openly Arrived At HIS, we are informed, is the open | on, but that is not going to make difference in our life. Nothing s, and they are opens for us but new pl much the same one on as another. There are no game laws on actors. As far as danger goes, sniping at actors is probably the most dangerous sport in the world. They wound easily but it is practically impossible to kill them. Aim an elephant gun at a leading n nd hit him squarely between the eyes and he will continue to charge. And yet on the other hand the same hardy specimen may be bruised merely by your failure to clap one hand against another. Once we had a pet actor but we lost him. In writing about him we said he gave “an almost perfect perform- ance.” The adverb ruined us in his esti- mation. He 1 that he would never speak to us again because we had given him such a bad notice. The practice of potting actors, then, is a curious combination in which the sportsman must have all the delicacy and finesse of a humming-bird hunter and at the same time be able to fire a charge suffi- cient to bring down a rhinoceros. Even at that he must be prepared to flee for his life for there is nothing quite so terrifying as the charge of an actor after he has been wounded. ATMOST all attempts to domestica +> actors fail miserably. The only ad- vantage of keeping them in captivity is that they die rapidly. Nothing is known of the methods by which they are trained, though it is erally believed that it is all done by kindness. Indeed one often catches a hoarse and raucous note in the voice of a star during an emotional appeal which quite convinces you that the by Heywood Broun Illustrations by Weed manager is standing in the wings and will throw the actor a fish as soon as the curtain descends. Personally we don’t believe we should ever care to engage in any form of marks- manship in which the quarry was any- thing more than actors. It would de tate us to shoot deer or rabbits because they look so human. And our kind- heartedness has always made us keep clear of lions and tigers. Once we tried for a clay pigeon, but fortunately we missed and thank heaven its blood is not on our head. We never could understand the enthusiasm with which some men go after this game. Of course they may speak of the necessity of obtaining sus- Bean shooter season opens Nov. 1 6 tenance in wild places, but we would al- most as soon starve as tackle clay pigeon pie. It would be agonizing for us to shoot one of the little creatures. We would feel just as much horror as if we had broken a dish. YrARS ago we used to do a little hunting with a bean shooter, Just across the street from our house ther lived an old lady who was suffering from nervous prostration. One night she for- got to pull down the shades in her parlor, Our brother, who was the keenest sports- man in the family, was delighted. Ob- taining a couple of handfuls of buckshot he took up a position at a window in a darkened room at the front of the hous His skill was uncanny. He never missed the old lady’s window once. Every time the buckshot crashed against the pane of glass she would leap from her chair. We alternated in shooting, but as it happened we never once hit the target. Looking back on the incident from so great a dis- tance we can’t remember whether it was pity which spoiled our aim or whether we were simply a bad shot. At any rate the old lady finally di covered us even in the darkness. She identified the house from which the shots were coming because of our loud laughter when she happened to leap out of her chair a little more suddenly than usual after one of our brother's winning shots. There were five in the family, including us, father and mother and a’ cook, but that old lady without even making an investigation accused our brother and ourself. We were not allowed to say 4 word in our own defense but were sent over to apologize in persons. This seemed to us just, as far as our brother was concerned, but otherwise monstrous.