Life — December 15, 1921 — page 14: what you’re looking at

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

an AB Renee “Mistah Bascom, sah, kin yo’ tell me when dat vehickel ov yourn will cease obstructi “Deed I kaint! I bin fo’ de las’ two hours tryin’ to persuade dat mule to move, an’ I’se ’erbout wore out i EALLY, I don’t know what I can say for publication, except that I love my work.” With a graceful wave of his right foreleg, the Mule motioned us to a sea beside him in his stall in the Comic Supplement Art Rooms. “Something about myself? Why, there is really nothing that I can say that has not already been said in my latest book, ‘Comic Characters I Have Kicked’ Did I know the Yellow Kid? Oh, intimately’—here the Mule hee- hawed delightfully—‘in fact, it might almost be said that I gave him his first start. That was all of twenty-five years ago; I was a mere jackass at the time. “Then there was Happy Harrigan; I worked with him every Sunday for five years in the colored sheet of the old Sunday Oof. There was quite a lawsuit over me once. An artist—I’ve forgotten his name—kidnapped me for the Sunday Zowie, and for several months I kicked there regularly every week, or until the editors of the Oof Chats With Famous Fun-Makers No. 1—The Mule got an injunction out restraining me. They said I belonged to them; that I was copyrighted from my crossed eyes to my hind feet. . . It was quite exciting for a while and rather wearing, as I was kicking in two papers every week. I was glad when it was settled.” A buzzer buzzed sharply in a corner of the Mule’s stall and he waved his right foreleg in a gesture of impatie: “It's the creator of the Krazy Kids calling me,” he explained. “I under- stand I’m to kick Krazy Klarence through a stone wall this Sunday. I heard the art manager talking about it. It’s what they call an idea. I’m rather weary of stone walls. I suppose”— here the Mule paused reflectively—‘“I suppose in the last twenty-five years I’ve kicked at least seventeen comic characters through probably several hundred stone walls. And the barn doors I have kicked them through! And the windows! Old as I am, I love the crash of glass still, it’s so genu- ’ ov de highway?” 1” inely comic. My record for height? Oh, T couldn’t say offhand, but I think it was when I planted my hind fect on Farmer Jayhawk—you remember fat Farmer awk, of course, in the old Sunday Pow?—and kicked him into the basket of a passing balloon. It was one of the best things I ever did, as we art- ists say.” Here the buzzer buzzed again, more petulantly than before. The Maule arose, and, smiling affably, gave us his right foot; fore, not hind; and gently not professionally. “Coming!” he brayed. “Just one word more,” we requesied “I'd love to,” he sighed, “but they won't hear of it. The indispensable man doesn’t exist, but the indispensaile mule does, and I am he. My present contract, recently signed, is for ninety- nine years, with option of renewal by the Sunday Zam.” Arthur H. Folwell. comicbooks.com