Judge, 1926-01-30 · page 16 of 36
Judge — January 30, 1926 — page 16: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains three separate pieces of romantic satire typical of Judge magazine's humor circa 1920s-1930s. **"Say It With Flowers"** (top): A six-panel comic strip satirizing men's courtship tactics. Each panel shows a man giving flowers to a woman with escalating consequences—from a casual "ride" invitation to traffic court fines ($100 and costs). The joke is that flowers are supposed to smooth over romantic missteps, but they fail to prevent increasingly serious legal troubles. **"Proof Conclusive"** (bottom left): A poem by Gardner Rea mocking male ego. A man concludes his girlfriend is "stupid" because she rejected him ("handed me the mitten"), despite acknowledging her wit, athleticism, and charm. The satire targets male vanity—he can't accept rejection so invents a character flaw. **"Did I Do Right?"** (right): A prose story about a man experiencing love-at-first-sight on a crowded avenue, complete with physical descriptions of the mysterious woman. The narrative treats this fleeting encounter with dramatic intensity, satirizing romantic daydreaming and male fantasizing about strangers. Together, these pieces mock masculine attitudes toward courtship and relationships.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
“ 4 ‘ » «“g BE IN THE TRAFFIC-CouRT To-MoRRoW, $100 ano costs ! UL Say It With Flowers, Proof Conclusive ucrnDA, I regret to say— Although, of course, she’s witty, Dances like a coryphée And sits her filly pretty, Knows her car from A to chassis, Swings a mean and artful brassie; Though the sight of her’s delight For man, and work for Cupid— Lucy isn’t very bright; In fact, she’s downright stupid: What’s my proof? It’s quickly written: Lucy’s handed me the mitten! Gardner Rea Passerpy—You wife beater! Did I Do Right? M Y WAKE has never been strewn i with shattered feminine hearts. Durable, rather than magnetic, they put it. ‘Plain, but dishonest,” my wife suggests. ically. However— This evening I elbowed hurriedly up the Avenue. Faces blurred past, snooting hungrily supperwards. Life had begun to lose its lift. Eat, work, sleep—was this truly theend? A lot of new books published below ‘Twenty-third street said so. Loudly they said it—and many of them in English. Then I became aware of two smiling blue eyes. She was still half a square distant. Tall, but not too tall, in a quietly ex- pensive blue tweed suit. Gray furs against the peach of her cheeks. A blue toque, cocked ever so provoca- tively. Smiling slightly, as on a friend. A delightful tingle corrugated my i Then I knew—some lucky just behind me. Casually I cast a glance over my shoulder. No, there was no one. Just Moe poking a finger into Abe’s cravat to em- phasize some vital point in the dis- posal of ready-to-wear. Hundreds of him. I risked another look. Was she making her way toward me? Hot and cold shivers. Our eyes met over the bobbing derbies. This time there was no shadow of doubt. “Gosh,” I said to my flopping heart, “I’ve read about this sort of thing, but say—” Bravely she launched into the human, or nearly human, tide. My brain reeled dizzily. Why had she comicbooks.com