Judge, 1926-04-10 · page 22 of 36
Judge — April 10, 1926 — page 22: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a humorous advice column satirizing both the poor conditions of American jails and the absurdity of trying to maintain morale in incarceration. The piece mocks jail authorities for providing no entertainment while acknowledging that prisoners—from murderers to "lesser lawbreakers"—need ways to pass time. The satire works on multiple levels: it treats imprisonment as inevitable ("with so many laws to break"), presents darkly comic suggestions (a crossword puzzle book with no pencil to prevent suicide), and offers genuinely ridiculous activities like skipping rope around a cell or having a tug-of-war with oneself. The accompanying cartoons illustrate the absurdity: one shows a man juggling while surrounded by orbiting objects (spring chaos), another depicts a pedestrian refusing to raise his hands while seemingly dressed like a criminal, and a third shows an idealized rural scene—the fantasy escape from confinement. The overall message critiques the callousness of the penal system while using dark humor to acknowledge widespread incarceration.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
How to Amuse Yourself , | in Jail | HAT with somany laws to break, | it stands to reason that you are | very likely to find yourself in jail one of these days, and then these little suggestions for amusing your- self will come in handy indeed. Jail authorities are notoriously negligent when it comes to providing amuse- ment for their guests, although once in a while you do hear of one of the more kind-hearted ones giving a fel- low that’s sentenced to hang the next week a copy of a crossword puzzle book, but with no pencil, as the poor wretch would be apt to stab him- self with it or lick the paint off and poison himself and thus cheat the electrician out of his fee. But, of course, we all can’t be mur- derers, and the lesser lawbreaker sometimes finds time heavy on his hands, more especially if he is in a cell all by himself with no cellmate for a playmate. With a cellmate for a playmate the amusement prob- lem is nplified, say one hundred per cent. Go ahead and say it. All right. Ah, but when one is all If in a cold, damp jail—are warm and dry/—with no cellmate for a playmate, then is when one must use one’s ingenuity if one is to enjoy one’s self at all. es yp Sem Here are the suggestion “ ij 77 2, A 7 . 4 ML EEES For this first trick you'll need a | PepestriaN—No, I will not put up my hands! What d’ye s' pose I clothesline. The best way to pro- got this outfit for? cure a clothesline while in jail is to ask the nearest keeper for one. He'll | probably think you want to hang yourself with it, so he'll get one for you. When you get it, tie one end to the cell door and the other end to one of the bars of the window. Now you've got your line up. All that has taken time, and time is | what one tries to get rid of when one is in jail. Now what are you going | to do with your line, now that you’ve got it up? Well, there’s any number of things you can do with it. First of all, you | can take it down and skip with it. Of course, you can’t skip out of jail with it, but you can skip all around your cell with it and then back again. Then you can try pepper, salt, mustard, cider, vinegar, and, when you have mastered that, you can try skipping on one foot and then | the other. Or, you can skip on the other foot first. Another thing you can do with the rope is to have a tug-of-war with yourself. Put the rope around a bar in the window and pull both ends. H In the spring the middle-aged man would be entirely happy if things If the bar gives way, so much the | could be fixed something like this. better. ti. comicbooks.com