Judge, 1925-08-15 · page 18 of 37
Judge — August 15, 1925 — page 18: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a humorous satirical piece about female ignorance, reflecting early 20th-century gender stereotypes. The unnamed narrator describes a girl who confuses flower names with completely unrelated concepts—"bachelor buttons" as laundry services, "asters" as hotels, "sweet peas" as vegetables, and "tuberose" as a disease. The joke mocks her lack of education while portraying her as charmingly oblivious. A secondary cartoon shows Mr. Jones threatening violence over a revolver being hidden, suggesting domestic discord. The satire targets both the girl's intellectual gaps and, implicitly, limited female education of the era. The piece uses her malapropisms for comedic effect, playing on period assumptions that women were less educated and more concerned with frivolous pursuits like bathing than intellectual matters—even rejecting interest in royalty as "American" despite her confusion about basic facts.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
I Know a Girl JHE thinks bachelor buttons are what some laundries sew on free of charge, that asters are hotels and that sweet peas are vegetables, but she says she just loves the little blooming things and that they make the world so bright as they wave gayly in the fields wafted by some gentle summer breeze. I don’t know where she picks up thoughts like that. The other day I asked her if she liked carnations and she said she’d never been to one but that her grand- father had gone to England specially to see Edward, Prince of Wales, be- come king and never got finished talking about it. However. she said, she, personally, was not the least bit interested in royalty as she was K American to the very core. I’d have liked to asked her how that had anything to do with it but I refrained. I told her I gave my mother some tea roses for her birthday and it de- veloped that she thought they were these little cheese cloth bags filled with tea and called by a fancy name. She allowed that one never could tell what these advertising men would call a thing next. ! —S IS ~~ SS Mr. Jonuzs (after switching on |i ts going to catch h—— for puttingthis' revolver! She thinks orchids are where they grow apples, that tuberose is a dis- ease, and that mignonette is a little fish. ; poe We were passing pe cl the suburbs in the car one n and I asked her if she liked nasturtiums. She told me that she hated them. They were always so crowded and besides she preferred surf bathing. When I mentioned lilies to her she comicbooks.com