Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #3 — page 64: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This page from *Captain Billy's Whiz Bang* presents two brief humorous pieces: **"Direct from Denver"** mocks prudish social conventions around public displays of affection. A shy young woman asks a Denver Tourist Bureau clerk whether it's "proper" for her fiancé to kiss her goodbye publicly before his departure. Mrs. Hobbs (the clerk) gives a noncommittal answer. The joke is that the couple proceeds to kiss anyway "just as the train was about to pull out"—and the crowd "wasn't so badly shocked," suggesting that public kissing, while socially questionable to some, was becoming more acceptable. The brief fable that follows satirizes parents who boast about their children's intelligence, using crude humor ("deaf and dumb") typical of the era's satire magazine style.