Judge — August 23, 1924 — page 29: what you’re looking at

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

known as a serious play opened at the Gaiety Theater. Obviously enough, in order to fulfill my con- tract with JupGe, I should have put a couple of extra collars in my pocket and gone to review it. But did I do so? I may tell you in strict con- fidence that I did not. With the moon high in the sky and the fra- grant smell of Scotch highballs per- meating the soft night air, the notion of viewing the dramatic spectacle of an estranged husband and wife being reunited by the criti- cal illness of their little son Gomez, or of a woman confronted by her scarlet past on the eve of her mar- riage to the handsome and meritori- ous Comte August von Valentino did not hit me, so to speak, where I live. Such tableaux may conceivably be endured in the dead of winter, but certainly not when the city takes on the manner of a hot water bottle. Therefore, with my customary sum- mer abandon, I whispered to myself the single trenchant word nix, and hied me instead to the house of a boon camarado which has, to the rear of it, a very lovely and theoreti- cally cool garden. Here we sat, my boon camarado and I, ruminating on the imbecility of going to a theater on such a night and being stung, during our ruminating, by no less than 400 mosquitoes apiece. After the mosquitoes got through with us, their further share of the Servant (interviewing lady)— And ’ow long were you with your last cook, may I arsk? —London Mail ACA Xj xh y “What's that bloomin’ noise outside?” “Why, it’s an owl.” “T know it’s an ’owl—but who's ’owling?” night’s work was taken up by a com- prehensive catalog of bugs and insects. Those bugs that didn’t have a penchant for our highballs seemed to have a violent and incur- able infatuation for our ears, and those insects that were not busy crawling into our collars were ap- parently possessed of a fifteenth century passion for crawling up in- side the legs of our trousers. Yet, there we sat, my boon camarado and I, insisting that only a congenital dolt would go to the theater on such a summer evening. On another evening, a play opened down in the Cherry Lane Playhouse. Now, as you know, going to review plays at the Cherry Lane Playhouse ought to be a jollier affair in summer than in winter, for if one goes in winter, one has to take a snow- plow along if one is to get to the theater in time for the end of the second act. But still I couldn’t persuade myself. Go ‘way down there on a night like this! I said to myself. Not on your tintype! as the new phrase has it. —Passing Show (London) So, instead, I hired a taxicab and rode $4.75 into the country, bringing up eventually at an inn. An inn is a dilapidated frame house with a fancily painted sign hanging outside the door. Inside one finds two sweaty negro waiters who promptly insist that one order a_ broiled chicken. This constitutes the tech- nique of inn-ing. Peculiarly enough, I didn’t feel like eating a broiled chicken three quarters of’ an hour after dinner, so we compromised on a bottle of ginger ale, the fee for which was $1.25° plus a modest couvert charge of $2. And so I say that any man who goes to the theater in summer in- stead of having a good time else- where is a jackass. toe “Those fishermen have a hard aid the first man. “Oh, I don’t know,” replied his tired-looking friend. “Think of be- ing able to go fishing without quit- ting work.” —Boston Transcript comicbooks.com