Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, June 1922 · page 12 of 68
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #34 — page 12: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page from the April 1, 1922 issue features a letter from a female reader (A. Kaye) in Chattanooga requesting Captain Billy reveal his personality. She notes finding his magazine everywhere—in farmers' homes, towns across America, even Baptist ministers' houses—yet feels unable to discern who he actually is from his writing. She references her changed opinions on Shakespeare and Balzac after reading their autobiographies, then puzzles over Captain Billy's contradictory tone: sometimes deeply emotional, sometimes flippant. She calls him "an enigma" and asks him to satisfy her curiosity about his true nature "on a good sportsmanship basis." The editor's brother responds that her letter, dated April 1st, "could not be misconstrued as an April Fool joke, but we must confess it is indeed a puzzler"—suggesting the request itself is playfully mysterious. The page showcases *Whiz Bang*'s interactive reader engagement and the era's curiosity about magazine editors as personalities.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
10 Captain Billy's Whiz Bang friend, who gives her address in the eight hun- dred block of McCallie Avenue, Chattanooga, Tennessee: Chattanooga, Tenn., April 1, 1922. Dear Captain Billy:— Saturday night, 10:20 P. M., a fireplace, a typewriter that would do justice to a museum, and a copy of “Whiz Bang.” Curiosity being ever and always pardonable in a woman, I have this quality for an excuse in writing this letter. I have traveled from the Pacific to the Atlantic sea- board and in many large cities it has been my good for- tune to mingle with people to whom respectability and a fear of God predominates. Everywhere I find Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang. In small towns, east, west, north, or south, all are the same, I find “you.” In the homes of the goodly and simple farmer, town folk and even in the home of the Baptist Minister. All of which arouses “said curiosity” to know just what you are like. One can appreciate the works of authors ever so much more after their autobiography has been delved into. I have changed my opinion three times about Shakespeare, due to Hamlet, Midsummer’s Night Dream, and Venus and Adonis. Likewise Balzac, etc., but I’ll be darned if I can gather a bit of “your personality or make-up” from Whiz Bang. My question has been asked. Will you satisfy my curiosity on a good sportsmanship basis? The Captain Billy who writes with such pathos one time and perfectly “terrible” the next—well I just don’t believe in extremes. You are very much of an enigma. Please may I not know what you are all about? (Sgd.) A. KAYE, My brother’s answer was as follows: Dear Madam: Yours of the 1st could not be misconstrued as an April Fool joke, but we must confess it is indeed a puzzler. It