Judge — December 14, 1929 — page 11: what you’re looking at

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

Spare the Rod and Spoil the Relative By S. J. Perelman you ap been idly fingering the Bull (Montana) I Courier-Intelligencer-Tageblatt-Times last Tuesday you would have found tugged away in an obscen: corner an interesting little news item, party of five old woodsmen and trappers from the Ozarks saw their first movie at the Paramount. Not one member of the quin- tette was under sixty; Adolph Zukor, Samucl Goldwyn, and Carl Laemmle were all sixty-eight, while Jesse Lasky and Joseph Schenck were eighty-four and one hundred and fourteen respectively. After the per formance the members of the party drank their first automobile and enjoyed a spin in the first ice n soda they had ever seen. Pressed for a state- ment anent their sensations, all ap- peared slightly wistful. “Wa'al,” they hesitated, scratching their woolly polls, “Ah kain't see d much diff'unce sence Ah wuz set free ere y Cun'nl Whitney aftuh de No'thuns Keep the cush in the family, boys, and | cuated befo' Shiloh, Reckon Ah safeguard Auntie’s snoot with a mud- j allus appy ovuh deh on Staten guard. j Island plantation, long’s Ah had mah And now for gentle old Cousin Alex- } corn pone an’ chicken soup. Folks allus . andra Vassilyevitch who's lived all these sayin,’ Wash, whyn't yo-all cross ovuh Figure 1 years in that seven-gabled house in | de bay some day an’ visit N’Yawk?” Salem, alone cxcept for seventeen mil- } Lawdy, chile, ‘specs it’s ‘cose Ah’'s gettin’ kinduh ole an’ lion dollars, Do you remember her last letter: “If I ‘speetin’ de Grim Reapuh, he he he! And Uncle Buck- only had a goitre or something to while away the long | wheat cackled loudly as he went on shucking the preludes winter evenings!” Well, why not? Don't hem and haw | from Asia Minor destined for Marse Horovitz’s hunt ¢ pitre you gave her two years ago; did breakfast. ou expect a cheap gun-metal thing like that lined with | Yes, indeed, time certainly flies and here it is Christmas cardboard to give a fussy old woman any real WEAR? ain. No doubt many of you have been lying awake When I saw her early last summer in the Domino Room of its saying to yourself, ow, What t Libby’s Turkish Baths the goitre was all weather-beaten 11 put in Aunt Praline or Grandma's st and the paint peeling off so badly that poor Cousin Alex- | a-cinch that Aunt Praline hasn't been lying awake andra had to keep her face averted from me and my wondering what to give you. I saw her myself sneaking _ party. } down DeRussey’s Lane with Joe the milkman last night, “Look at her,” Oscar Wilde remarked to me with a | but that is neither here nor there (Im man is neither here nor there, He is probably lying awake right this minute wondering what to give Aunt Praline.) But enough of this, she said with an imperious toss of her wilful auburn curls. What little tokens of your affection are the old buzzards going to crow over Christ mas morning when they should be stuffing the evergreen tree and glueing the tinsel on the roast duck? First, of course, there is Grand ma. Grandma, as a matter of fact, is alicays first. Has anybody ever seen the old witch when shv wasn't reaming the rest of the family of the white meat or knock- ing off the lion’s share of the y or hogging the bath-tub for three hours? Only three wee ago she was yipping that she needed a wire cage for her love- birds. In Figure 1 is a splendid little cage for Grandma, a bit too la for the love-birds, it is true, but just cozy for Gran. Simply kick her into the cage, lock the in, Joe, the milk- > JUDGE door, and throw away the key. Let her swing on the trapeze all she wants to, let her hang upside down on the bar, let her yell herself blue in the kisser. Any white meat that’s left over give to the dog, whose man- pers are certainly better than Grandma's. Now, how about Aunt Katerina Ivanovna? Good old rina Ivanovna, with her long prying nose, always | wanting to know what dirty book you concealed in between shirts in the bureau or who you're pashing on the porch. Figure 2 is a cheap line cut of Aunt Katerina’s vade mecum, a sturdy tin mudguard to hook onto her schnoz- | zle when she goes peering through the | porticres to sce what’s popping in the | parlor, Last winter when Brother | i kK your Do nicked her smeller with his ne for snooping into a flask in | his overcoat, the old witch nearly left | all her money to an orphan asylum. shudder, “I hope I never get to look like that!” “You will, Oscar, you will!” laughed Whistler, cynically buttering a crumpet with scone in his voice, And the words of the Sage of Concord were only too true, Fifteen years later in Piccadilly Circus an aged and trembling flower-girl hawked her violets above the roar of buses to indifferent passersby. Did the rough costers who jostled her suspect that behind that scarred mask lay the lincaments of Ose erbottom ? He whom the incomparable Max had dubbed “Honey Boy Oscar,” was now only a scabby stick of driftwood floating on the backwash of London's night-life. Mens sano in mens bath room. But getting back to Cousin Alexandra. Here, in Figure swell double-decked two-seater goitre. Send her one, or better still, why not go up yourself and apply it lightly over her head? Just a per- sonal Christmas massage from you to her. Gad, what a Yuletide it ought to be! 3, is a