Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, April 1921 · page 22 of 68
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #19 — page 22: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a short satirical story (not a cartoon) from *Captain Billy's Whiz Bang*, a humor magazine popular in the 1920s. The piece satirizes male infidelity and marital temptation through dramatic irony. A supposedly happily married man describes his wife's beauty in glowing terms, then reveals he's actually obsessed with her younger sister (eighteen years old). He acknowledges the sister is nearly identical to his wife but somehow more attractive—her lips "delicately perfect," her eyes "more expressive," her hair like a "waterfall." The satire mocks the narrator's self-deception: he claims happiness while clearly lusting after a family member, and the story's title ("Such Is Life") suggests this predicament is universally relatable male weakness. The piece targets both masculine hypocrisy and the era's frank acknowledgment of sexual desire within respectable publications.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
20 Captain Billy's Whiz Bang Such Is Life By JANE GAITES I am happily married. My wife is as good as she is beautiful. Following is a brief description of her: Her hair ripples into alluring little golden ringlets about her rosy cheeks. Her eyes are large and brown and are fringed with exquisitely long eyelashes. Her lips are almost perfectly formed and she has the sweetest smile in all the world. I love to fondle and amuse her. I kiss the white neck, her lips, her hands—and I dream. Why shouldn't I dream—does not every happily married man live in fancy? My dream, good God, brings to me a terrible realization! Before me is not my wife, but her sister, a girl of eighteen years, who is said to be her living image. Their features are almost identical. The girl's lips, however, are delicately perfect. Her eyes, if possible, are even more expressive than those of the other woman, and are larger. Her hair, when opened out, tumbles like a great waterfall down her back. When with her, I am contented, absolutely so. When away from her, I grow morose; her image haunts me. I see her at the head of my table, by my fireside;