Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, March 1922 · page 52 of 68
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #31 — page 52: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains two separate humor pieces from *Captain Billy's Whiz Bang*, an early 20th-century American satirical magazine. **First piece**: A colored minister delivers a sermon on free salvation, then announces a collection. A congregant protests the contradiction. The parson's response uses an extended water metaphor: salvation itself is "free" like river water, but the *infrastructure* to deliver it (the church institution, clergy, buildings) costs money—like piping water to your house. The joke mocks how religious institutions frame mandatory donations as unavoidable institutional costs rather than true charity. **Second piece**: A brief, darkly comic exchange between Deacon Miller and his jailed son. The son writes he's imprisoned; the father replies he is too. The joke's meaning is deliberately opaque—whether both are literally incarcerated, the father is metaphorically "imprisoned" by shame, or it's simply absurdist humor—remains unclear from the text alone. Both pieces employ working-class characters and irreverent humor typical of the magazine's style.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
50 Captain Billy's Whiz Bang The Piping Costs The colored minister had just concluded a powerful sermon on “Salvation is Free” and was announcing that a collection would be taken. Up jumped a brother in the back of the church. “If salvation is free,” he inter-rupted, “what’s the use paying for it? I’m going to give you nothing till I find out. Now—” “Patience, brother, patience,” said the par-son. “I’ll illustrate. Suppose you were thirsty and came to a river. You could kneel right down and drink, couldn’t you? And it would cost you nothing, would it?” “Of course not. That’s just what I—” “That water would be free,” continued the parson. “But supposing you were to have that water piped to your house, you would have to pay, would you not?” “Yes, sir, but—” “Well, brother, salvation is free, but it is the having it piped to you that you got to pay for. Pass the hat, sexton.” * * * IT WAS rather quiet at the postoffice the other day and outside of the Whiz Bang mail our genial postmaster, Bud Nasset, sorted out only two letters. The first one was addressed to Deacon Miller from his son, read-ing as follows: “Dear Father—I am in jail. Son.” The Deacon’s answer was the other let-ter, “Dear Son—So am I. Father.”