Part 2

“Frightened is no name for it; I was dressing.”

“Mercy, how embarrassing! Whatever did you do?”

“Oh, he was very considerate, he covered me with his revolver.”

* * * * *

She may be deaf but she’ll get her hearing the morning.

* * * * *

Out of the Past

A rookie, all dolled up in his new uniform and ready for first liberty, strutted down the steps of the barracks and met the colonel coming up. The silver eagles of the colonel’s shoulder straps meant nothing in this rookie’s young life, and he was about to pass with only a casual glance. The colonel, feeling somewhat different, addressed the lad in an impressive voice: “Young man, how long have you been here?” The rookie’s face radiated surprise and gladness at having thus been noticed by an apparent old timer, and he eagerly replied: “Why, I been here three days, how long you been here?”

* * * * *

A New Label

OLD CORNO 100 Poof Bottled In Barn Aged In Woods MADE OUT OF SPRING 1919 BOTTLED ALL OF 1920 Guaranteed to Conform with All Pure Fool and Drunk Acts

* * * * *

“It says in this paper that Lloyd George castigated the German delegates,” growled Panhandle Pete, glancing up from a paper all stained with near-beer.

“And that’s just what they had a-comin’,” vigorously assented his pal.

* * * * *

It is easy to be generous to another man’s wife.

_Limber Kicks_

Oh, I Beg Your Pardon!

I stepped inside and closed the door, Thinking the office was Brady’s, But turned when I saw the white tiled floor, And found that the sign read SEIDAL

* * * * *

Winding Stares

She went up the winding stairs, And close behind I followed; She stooped down to tie her shoe, My chewing gum I swallowed.

* * * * *

Page Billy Misque

A girl who is young, cute and frisque, Can always get plenty of home-made whisque; Any guy she may asque Will slip her a flasque, If she’ll only slip him a kissque.

* * * * *

In a parlor were three, My girl, a lamp and me. Three’s a crowd without a doubt, Wasn’t it nice when the lamp went out?

* * * * *

At the Sign of the Zodiac

The Ram, the Bull, the Heavenly Twins; Near the Crab the Lion shines; The Virgin and the Scales; The Scorpion, Archer and the Goat; The Man who holds the Watering Pot, And Fishes with their glittering tails.

* * * * *

Shoo Fly, Oil Man!

A horse-fly lit on the old cow’s skin, Hung his tools and spudded in. Bowed his back and jiggered his pole And all the time he was making a hole. The cow browsed on, in her usual way, Till the horse-fly’s bit struck regular “pay,” Then she swung her tail with a vicious dig And deftly skidded the horse-fly’s rig.

* * * * *

Fastidious

A handsome young fellow named Bertie, Was out with a flapper named Gertie; “Come, kiss me,” he said, But she nodded her head And cried, “I think kissing’s too unsanitary.”

* * * * *

Bawl of a Brute Bachelor

Here’s to the woman of days gone by; (May we meet her kind above!) The woman for whom a man would die, The woman who ruled by love; Who didn’t harangue and who didn’t parade, In whose home it was sweet to dwell; Who believed in raising children, And not in raising hell!

* * * * *

“Why so thin, my pretty maid?” “I’m on a fast, kind sir,” she said. “And how fast are you now?” he said, “That’s none of your affair,” she said.

* * * * *

Lady of the House—You may go to your room now and change your dress. John, the butler, will show you the way.

Maid (fussed)—Oh, I know how myself, missus.

_California Beach Nuts_

BY REV. “GOLIGHTLY” MORRILL

Pastor People’s Church, Minneapolis, Minn.

California’s coast is a big bathing beach. The state is not only famous for its walnuts, but for its beach nuts one sees every day, especially Sunday.

The ocean strand is covered with half-dressed women, boys and girls sprawled out like goats and satyrs hugging the shore and each other. It is the playground of the sexes.

At many bathing resorts Sunday is anything but religious. The cross gives way to Cupid’s bow and arrow. The Bible is the book of nature done in calf. Brown lads lie with their heads in the laps of half-naked brunettes, forgetting that to do so and not mean harm is “hypocrisy to the devil” who tempts their virtue. They make no attempt to hide under beach umbrellas. One may question their propriety, but neither their nerve nor shape. Their speech is low, but if actions speak louder than words, their conduct is often vulgar if not vicious. We saw a place advertised as the “safest beach,” but without falling into the deep water we fear the devil’s undertow is carrying many out beyond their moral depth. “Love one another” is the favorite text, and the “laying on of hands” is not omitted. All the flesh-pots were not in Egypt. Cleopatra had a good time on the Nile and “Clara” has the same time here. We saw many couples and decided that more marriages were made on the beach than in heaven. Position in society is everything. Here there was everything in position. Heads in laps, arms around waists, boys in girls’ laps, girls in boys’, legs linked, or arms and legs tied up in lover’s bow-knots. All were taking “Sea”estas in their “surge” suits. The sight was very “surf”eiting. In this Cupid school we saw girls with pearly teeth, but with no pearls of wisdom; many who could paint their face, but not paint a Madonna; girls who could play with the boys, but not the piano; the only apparent study was that of anatomy.

Breakers on the beaches are divided into three classes: ocean-breakers, law-breakers and heart-breakers. California is a fruit state and we looked everywhere to see the “peaches” on the beaches—but most of them were dried, and there were more old Iowa valetudinarians and bearded bipeds than anyone else. Timon of Athens was a misanthrope who went to the seashore to get away from mankind. Had he come to this beach, the day we were there, he would have prayed for a tidal wave to wipe it off the map.

Scripture says of the beautiful lilies, “they toil not, neither do they spin.” Of these painted, half-dressed, lounging, walking, posturing beach-combers with their dry feet, we say, “They toil not, neither do they swim.” We came away from the beach that Sunday with a composite picture of pop-eyed, pot-bellied promenaders in the sand, vulgar Venuses, wobbly wenches, living links, heavy-hipped hags, sinuous, shrunken men, tattered tights, tousled head nymphs, and vain cock of the walks admiring their own shape and gazing on their feet and fingernails.

We wish we could forget the bather’s singularity and angularity, the plethoric paunch, the blinking, bawling, calling, sprawling, mawling, drawling, squalling figures that defaced the beauty of the sky, the sea and the sand. Oh, the water cataracts running and dripping from shaking sides, heavy hips and swinging busts! If Ulysses and his crew sailed by this shore with its sweating sirens and howling hurdy-gurdies, they would stop their ears—but not for fear of being enticed ashore.

The poet sings of the “smile” of the sea—we do not wonder at laughing waves when they see some of the freak styles. What are the wild waves saying? Some things we think we better omit. To watch this beach of bathers is like having a front seat at the Winter Garden Follies. The visitor may study the contour of beach and bathers. Here he meets the living skeleton of angles and the bag of bones, as well as her heavy-set sister with all her capricious curves, crests, elevations and depressions. How unlike the pictures in the Sunday supplements, and how like the caricatures in the comic supplement. When first they appear all nice and dry they are passable, but look at them if you dare and can, when they take a dip or flop and come out with their homely lines all emphasized. No Greek statues, no things of beauty and joy forever, but shattered, disenchanting dreams, or nightmares rather.

Farewell to this flotsam and jetsam, foam and scum, these sand-flies. If you want to have a “good time,” go to the beach where the volume of nature and human nature is “wide open.” The text books you should bring and study on the seashore are Shelley, Burns, Sand, Crabbe and Bacon.

* * * * *

Dickory, dickory, docking, The mouse ran up her stocking, But I’m afraid Up there it stayed Which makes it twice as shocking!

* * * * *

A marriage certificate is a mere scrappy paper. One divorce leads to another, but the marriage vow will always be taken ad-in-fun-item.

* * * * *

Nice day for swimmin’!

What swimmin’?

Loo swimmin’.

* * * * *

“Your new stenog, I hear, is a beauty. Can she spell?”

“What does that matter?”

_Questions and Answers_

=Dear Captain Billy=—What is meant by “A third rail girl?”—=Inoa Recipe.=

It probably means one dangerous to touch.

* * * * *

=Dear Captain Billy=—What is your idea of the height of indifference?—=Goofey Gander.=

Spilling coffee in your lap and not caring which leg it runs down.

* * * * *

=Dear Captain Billy=—What is the difference between kissing a horse and an ugly girl?—=Paul Bearer.=

No difference whatever. In either case it’s a horse on you.

* * * * *

=Dear Whiz Bang Bill=—I am a great lover of literature, but find that friends borrow my books to read. Did you ever hear of anything like it?—=Oliver Mudd.=

We know an old fogy who married a flapper.

* * * * *

=Dear Captain Billy=—My sweetheart got angry at me last night and said I had feet like a camel. What did he mean?—=Rebeccah.=

He probably inferred that your feet had gone too long without water.

* * * * *

=Dear Capt. Whiz Bang=—A friend informs me his wife ran away with a “bank walker.” I have heard of bank tellers and bank cashiers, but never heard of a “bank walker.” Please tell me what he meant?—=Bob Sledd.=

Your query has been referred to the swimming editor.

* * * * *

=Dear Captain Billy=—Will you please tell me the origin of the expression: “Mother, who is this silly ass?”—=S. O. Elly.=

It originated in France after the close of the war when a poilu returned and, finding his home disrupted, left again to vow further vengeance on the German.

* * * * *

=Dear Cap=—Please tell me how to grow fat.—=Slim Jim.=

Breed hogs.

* * * * *

=Dear Skipper Bill=—What is a cure for a horse that slobbers?—=Artie Fishel.=

Teach him to spit.

* * * * *

=Dear Skipper=—What is the difference between a sewing machine and a kiss?—=B. Qrious.=

One sews seams nice and the other seams sew nice.

* * * * *

=Dear Captain Whiskers=—What is a crazy bone?—=Howe D. Dew.=

A dollar spent on a girl.

* * * * *

=Dear Kapten Billy=—An electriek trolly goes through my corn feild. Would it be against the law to uze it to shock my corn with?—=O. G. Kroakim.=

No, but be careful and not let the juice wet the kernels.

* * * * *

=Dear Skipper=—What is meant by “self respect”?—=Dottie Dimple.=

Self respect, Dottie, is a comfortable feeling one has in having escaped detection.

* * * * *

=Dear “Skipper”=—Who was the Duke of Peruna?—=C. C. Pill.=

Lydia Pinkham’s husband.

* * * * *

=Dear Captain Bill=—Please give me a definition of a cannibal.—=Student.=

Sure. One who loves his fellow man.

* * * * *

=Dear Skipper=—Kindly furnish me with an illustration of “Poetry of Motion.”—=Awsthetic Awlice.=

How would this be: A picnic girl with a bug down her back?

* * * * *

=Dear Skipper=—Do leaves of trees turn red in the fall from blushing because they are showing naked limbs?—=Bon Jurrows.=

No, it’s because they realize how green they were all summer.

* * * * *

=Dear Captain Billy=—I had a tussle with my beau last night. How may I recover myself?—=Petite Fifi.=

Go to a tailor.

* * * * *

=Dear Capt. Billy=—I am ambitious for a career on the stage. Can you suggest an act that will be entirely new and up-to-date?—=Art Gumm.=

Why not try kicking a giraffe in the mouth?

* * * * *

=Dear Cap=—I am a member of a newly formed organization known as the “Woman Hater’s Union.” Could you suggest a motto for our association?—=Fat Chance.=

“Oh, kill me now and call it the end of a perfect day.”

* * * * *

=Dear Skipper=—When is a good girl not a good girl?—=McNotty.=

About half the time, we’d say.

* * * * *

=Dear Captain Billy=—What is the difference between a rehearsal and a show?—=Plain Jane.=

A rehearsal is the same as a show, only nobody comes around to see it.

* * * * *

=Dear Captain Bullybeef=—My fiance says I have a peachy complexion. What does he mean?—=Kitty Furr.=

He probably infers, Kitty, that you have a yellow and orange shade with fuzz on your face.

* * * * *

=Dear Doctor Bill=—Why, oh why, did the police inspect her?—=The Duke o’ Dubuque.=

Possibly to help the “deek” detect her.

* * * * *

A convalescent requiring whisky and beer for rapid recovery is convalescent all over except his thirst, and that’s in the acute stages.

* * * * *

Another Jellyfish

“Boys,” asked the school master, “what do you consider the most beautiful thing in the world?”

“Sunshine,” hazarded one boy.

“Flowers,” ventured another.

Both answers were received with favor, and the turn went to a hefty youth.

“A woman,” announced he gruffly.

“Come out here,” commanded the master, sternly.

A good flogging was administered; and then the offender was bidden to go home and tell his father that he had been flogged, and why.

Next morning the floggee was again hauled up.

“Did you tell your father that you had been flogged?” asked the master.

“Yes, sir.”

“Did you tell him why?”

“Yes, sir.”

“What did he say?”

“Please, sir, dad and I talked it all over between us, and we’ve come to the conclusion that there’s something funny about you.”

_Whiz Bang Editorials_

“_The Bull is Mightier Than the Bullet_”

Press dispatches recently carried an item to the effect that although slightly mentally affected, the mother of Charlie Chaplin, upon her son’s earnest persuasion, had been allowed to enter this country from England.

Mrs. Chaplin, upon reaching New York, stood a chance, it was stated, of having to return had it not been for quick and effective energies of her sons and their friends in political power.

Those who know Chaplin well declare that the intense melancholy for which he is noted is due more than anything else to the affection and concern for his mother. Such things as domestic troubles, it is said, bear little weight with the man who daily makes millions laugh. ’Tis the mother.

What have we here! Consider this monumental fun-maker of the screen. Death is bad enough but when the mind of one very dear becomes clouded, then indeed does tragedy and sadness smite with a heavy hand.

We read of the circus clown whose wife and children burned to death, and yet, to keep a date with the world of fun lovers, he went ahead that night and clowned as never he had clowned before. Have we in Chaplin a great tragedy also? It will be recalled that when he was a small boy in London he and his mother and brother lived in a workhouse in order that the streets might not be their home.

Now his mother is coming home to him, to live amid all the luxury that great wealth may bring; wealth that came after a sad little fellow with merry feet, living in a workhouse with his mother, learned to be the greatest of all fun-makers. Life’s a funny proposition, folks, isn’t it?

* * * * *

Half a century ago the nude in art was strange enough in America to uplift Puritanic hands in holy horror. Today, among all cultivated people, the female nude is most matter-of-fact. Our notions of art the country over have been steadily clarifying, until at last the great distinction has been recognized and conceded even by pious folk that, while the human male figure is impossible, the female form is purely beautiful.

Those rabid for realism and resolutely uncompromising, will have the assurance to claim innocuousness for the undraped male; but the opinion today among those who are not extremists is still definitely against the frank exposition of the male form in plastic or painting.

At worst the mind receives merely a filip of interest; and complete nudity, to the male fancy, repeated again and again in art, speedily sates curiosity, and with that, incipient desire. As for the minds of women, no one would insult them with the suspicion that they find anything provocative in the portrayal of figures of their own sex.

In every landscape the eye notices at once and unavoidably the hills; it finds the plains and valleys only by an effort of the will. This fact has ever been admitted by the modern stage, which is, so far as the ethics of objective morality go, more conservative than modern art in its advanced attitude.

* * * * *

Be a Booster

If you can’t be a pine on the top of the hill, Be a scrub in the valley, but be The best little scrub by the side of the hill, Be a bush if you can’t be a tree; If you can’t be the sun be a star, But the best little booster wherever you are.

* * * * *

Teach me that 60 minutes make an hour, 16 ounces one pound and 100 cents one dollar. Help me so to live that I can lie down at night with a clear conscience, without a gun under my pillow and unhaunted by the faces of those to whom I have brought pain. Grant that I may earn my meal-ticket on the square, and that in earning it I may do unto others as I would have them do unto me. Deafen me to the jingle of tainted money and to the rustle of unholy skirts. Blind me to the faults of the other fellow but reveal to me my own. Guide me so that each night when I look across the dinner table at my wife who has been a blessing to me, I will have nothing to conceal. Keep me young enough to laugh with little children, and sympathetic enough to be considerate of old age. And when comes the day of darkened shades and the smell of flowers, the tread of soft footsteps and the crunching of wheels in the yard—make the ceremony short and the epitaph simply ‘=Here Lies a Man.=’

* * * * *

He that does not know, And knows he does not know; Can be taught. TEACH HIM!

He that does not know, But thinks he knows; Is a dangerous man. BEWARE OF HIM!

He that does know. And knows he knows; Is a wise man— FOLLOW HIM!

* * * * *

It’s a stiff neck that has no turning when a short skirt goes by.

* * * * *

I hope that when I die they’ll pour me back in the bottle. So do other soaks.

* * * * *

London Stuff

He had been married about a year and had taken to spending his evenings out West with the boys. One night his conscience worried him, and he thought he would phone his wife to have dinner with him.

“Hello, kiddo,” he began. “Slip on some old clothes and run down and meet me on the quiet. We’ll have a good dinner and then smear a little red paint around. How about it?”

“I’ll be delighted to join you,” was the reply. “But why not come up to the house, Jack, and get me? There’s nobody home.”

Today the young husband spends every evening at home. His name is Philip.

* * * * *

Oh! Gawsch!

A stripping bee took place at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Bohumil Albrecht Thursday evening. Those present Were the Mesdames Katherine Mach, John Marek, John Jelimek, Kenzel Pokorny, Mr. and Mrs. John Novotny, Mr. and Mrs. John Hanna and Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Wessely, Sr.—(From Kewauness (Wis.) Press.)

* * * * *

The High Cost of Company

Sign in European hotel, Manitowoc, Wis.: “If you have company over night an extra charge of 50c will be made.”

* * * * *

A fatted calf maketh a full stocking.

* * * * *

Then His Nerve Failed

One of the loveliest of girls went into a gents’ furnishing store to buy a necktie. She hesitated a moment, and then asked in a nice, straightforward way: “I want to put it on, please. Would you tie it for me?”

The clerk felt a little nervous, especially as the other fellows were watching him, but she had already pulled off the necktie that she wore. He said, “Certainly,” and, putting the new one around her neck as she ducked her head. She wore a dainty white silk shirt. When the tie was tied, the ends seemed a bit long, and he suggested: “Do you wear the ends tucked in?” “Yes,” she returned with unembarrassed absentmindedness. At this point his courage failed him.

* * * * *

She Knew the Truth

“Both of dese here gents,” said the witness, Mandy Thomas, rather impressed with the importance of being in court, “was standing at the corner conversin’ with each other pretty hot an’ pointed like.”

“Relate the conversation,” said the prosecutor.

“Ah don’t jest remember, sah,” said Mandy, “’cept dat dey was callin’ each other what dey is.”

* * * * *

Women used to carry money in their stocking, but it’s not safe to put money in public places now.

* * * * *

A rash marriage is only skin deep.

_Smokehouse Poetry_

_Whiz Bang has a double-winner for Smokehouse fans next issue! “The Lure of the Tropics” and “The Far East.”_

_“O’er chicle camps and logwood swamps_ _I hunted him many a moon,_ _Then found my man in a long pit pan_ _At the edge of a blue lagoon._

_“The chase was o’er at the farther shore;_ _It ended a two-year quest,_ _And I left him there with an empty stare_ _And a knife stuck in his chest.”_

_That’s the swing of the most noted poem of the tropics, “The Far East,” an excerpt from which follows, is familiar to Philippine war veterans_:

_“By the mud hole down in Subic_ _Looking lazy at the bay,_ _There’s a goo-goo dame awaiting,_ _And I think I hear her say:_ _‘Come you back you malo soldier_ _Come you back from o’er the sea,_ _Come you back and pay your jaw-bone,_ _Por-a-que! You jaw-bone me?’”_

* * * * *

The Hoboes’ Convention

By George Liebst

You have heard of big conventions, And there’s some you can’t forget, But get this straight, there’s none so great As when the hoboes met.

To Portland, Oregon, last year They came from near and far; On “tops” and “blind” where cinders whined, They rode on every car.

Three hundred came from New York state, Some came from Eagle Pass; That afternoon, the third of June, They gathered there en masse.

From Lone Star state came “Texas Slim” And “Jack the Katydid”; With “Lonesome Lou” from Kal’mazoo Came “San Diego Kid.”