Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, December 1921 · page 50 of 68
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #28 — page 50: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains three brief satirical anecdotes rather than cartoons. The **Evelyn Nesbit** item references a real scandal: Nesbit was a famous actress/model involved in a notorious 1906 murder case (her husband Harry Thaw killed her lover Stanford White). The anecdote mocks her by suggesting she uses her notoriety to weaponize minor incidents—yelling "fire" to draw police attention over a minor street altercation. **"Can We Forgive Him?"** satirizes ethnic prejudice and absurd identity claims. A sailor beats another sailor for calling him Irish, then bizarrely claims his mother was Mexican and his father consisted of "two marines"—a nonsensical, impossible lineage offered as serious justification. The joke mocks both casual ethnic slurs and the ridiculous "logic" used to defend honor. **"Pithole Filosofy"** is a brief insult-exchange joke between an adult and child, playing on folk-wisdom comebacks (comparing the adult's anger to brass, the child's retort to sap/stupidity). All three target human vanity, absurd reasoning, and social hypocrisy through humor.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
48 Captain Billy's Whiz Bang EVELYN NESBIT, formerly Mrs. Harry K. Thaw, recently caused the arrest of four men on charges of disorderly conduct. She complained they entered the hallway outside of her apartment and that one seized her by the shoulders and made an insulting remark. The complainant said she knew none of the men. At the station house Miss Nesbit said that the men fled in a taxicab when she ran to the street yelling “fire” and calling for the police. The quartet returned later and encountered two policemen. * * * Can We Forgive Him? The London Post reports the following— There was fighting in the fo’c’sle; and the aggressor, a hard-faced, hard-fisted sailor man from Rotherhithe, was called upon to explain. “That square-headed Swede miscalled me,” he bellowed. “He said I was an Irishman, and I’m not. Me mother was a good Mexican lady and me father was two marines from Chatham!” The explanation cordially accepted. * * * Pithole Filosofy One time I got mad at a sassy kid; I said, “There is enough brass in your face to make a large kettle.” He said “Yes, and there’s enough sap in your head to fill it.”