Judge — April 24, 1926 — page 17: what you’re looking at

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

“L’'m going down to the doctor’s to see about my liver.” “Stop at the garage on the way back and sce about your lights.” Why Are Funny Inventions Funny? by Don Herold ERGSON says that anything that suddenly reveals us as mechan- ical is particularly amusing to us. (This is going to be rather serious.) Thus we laugh when a man trips, because it interrupts his walking rhythm and reveals him as a walking machine. It might well make us sad to see one of our fellow creatures thus exposed as a walking machine, and therefore all of us similarly exposed as walking machines, but, instead, it makes us laugh. The human sense of humor is es- pecially keen and sensitive to things mechanical. In fact, this is why we have a sense of humor, if any. Man is essentially an infinite soul contending with and depending upon finite mechanisms. He is forever having trouble with his teeth, knee joints, heart and liver. He dreams of a hereafter when he shall be rid of all these Ford-like accessories. (It was only cruder con- cepts of the hereafter which included wings, harps, robes, etc. Now we know we don’t want to be bothered with such contrivances.) (I am going to close and start the auction in just a minute.) Now nature is sympathetic with our predicament. She says: “I know you are a bundle of mechanical and - chemical tricks. So I will give youa sense of humor quite alive to any- valves, sinuses, thing mechanical you get through This is why funny inventions are funny. The truth is that unfunny inven- tions are funny, too. Imagine the giggles in the first passenger elevator. We know the first railroad train was greeted not only with horse runaways but with horse laughs. Electric lights are funny, and so are escalators, ocean steamers, telephones, the radio, (Continued on page 28) This will help cue Z so in Said one lad to another: “The gui a hill in his back yard,” and the othe letting him put up a bluff like that”? A Love Story Mss: many years ago a young man named Edward and a young girl named Dorothea lived in a small New England town. Doro- thea was a beautiful maid, with eyes of deepest blue, hair of spun gold, even rows of white teeth, and the soft pink and white complexion of a baby. She was a vision, an angel sent down to gladden the hearts of all who were fortunate enough to gaze on her beauty. Of course, Edward was deeply in love with her. He was with her at every possible opportunity, and he longed to make her his wife. But she gave him very little encouragement and he grew more and more despon- dent. Without her life would not be worth living, and he knew a refusal from her would kill him. He proposed to Dorothea and told her that if she did not accept him he would surely die. But she flatly refused him. Fifty years later he died. Ted Osborne ry Many a fellow who has medals on his chest has scars on his back. 4 / \ S "(URE HAIR~LIP! y who lives next door to me is building 7 lad retorted: “What, Ozxtail, are you He was quite a wag. comicbooks.com