Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #24 — page 18: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This page contains three brief humorous anecdotes typical of the magazine's satirical style: 1. **"The Power of the Press"**: Satirizes small-town gossip and reputation-making. A Sunday School teacher warns girls about a new barber based on hearsay, but the barber claims all the girls smiled at him—illustrating how rumor and counter-rumor shape public perception. 2. **"Wall, I Calc'late!"**: A joke playing on educational ignorance. A justice of the peace misidentifies bigamy (having three wives) as "trigonometry," mocking rural officials' lack of learning. 3. **"We'd Say So"**: A brief quip about romantic physical intimacy as a signal for either proposing marriage or leaving. The content reflects 1920s small-town American life, rural dialects, and period attitudes toward courtship and authority figures.