Title: Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, Vol. 2, No. 20, May, 1921
Author: Various
Editor: W. H. Fawcett
Release date: April 25, 2018 [eBook #57047]
Language: English
Credits: Produced by David Edwards and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)
STATEMENT OF THE OWNERSHIP, MANAGEMENT, CIRCULATION, ETC., REQUIRED BY THE ACT OF CONGRESS OF AUGUST 24, 1912.
Of Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang, published monthly at Robbinsdale, Minnesota, for April 1, 1921.
State of Minnesota, County of Hennepin—ss.
Before me, a notary public in and for the State and County aforesaid, personally appeared Harvey Fawcett, who, having been duly sworn according to law, deposes and says that he is the business manager of Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang, and that the following is, to the best of his knowledge and belief, a true statement of the ownership, management (and if a daily paper, the circulation), etc., of the aforesaid publication for the date shown in the above caption, required by the Act of August 24, 1912, embodied in Section 443, Postal Laws and Regulations, printed on the reverse of this form, to-wit:
1. That the names and addresses of the publisher, editor, managing editor, and business managers are: Publisher, W. H. Fawcett, Robbinsdale, Minn.; editor, W. H. Fawcett, Robbinsdale, Minn.; managing editor, none; business manager, Harvey Fawcett, Robbinsdale, Minn.
2. That the owners are: (Give names and addresses of individual owners, or, if a corporation, give its name and the names and addresses of stockholders owning or holding 1 per cent or more of the total amount of stock.) W. H. Fawcett, Robbinsdale, Minn.
3. That the known bondholders, mortgagees, and other security holders owning or holding 1 per cent or more of total amount of bonds, mortgages, or other securities are: (If there are none, so state.) None.
4. That the two paragraphs next above, giving the names of the owners, stockholders, and security holders, if any, contain not only the list of stockholders and security holders as they appear upon the books of the company but also, in cases where the stockholder or security holder appears upon the books of the company as trustee or in any other fiduciary relation, the name of the person or corporation for whom such trustee is acting, is given; also that the said two paragraphs contain statements embracing affiant’s full knowledge and belief as to the circumstances and conditions under which stockholders and security holders who do not appear upon the books of the company as trustees, hold stock and securities in a capacity other than that of a bona fide owner; and this affiant has no reason to believe that any other person, association, or corporation has any interest direct or indirect in the said stock, bonds, other securities than as so stated by him.
5. That the average number of copies of each issue of this publication sold or distributed, through the mails or otherwise, to paid subscribers during the six months preceding the date shown above is: (This information is required from daily publications only.)
(Signed) HARVEY FAWCETT.
Sworn to and subscribed before me this 11th day of March, 1921.
ROBERT P. KIRBY.
[SEAL.] (My commission expires December 1, 1927.)
Captain Billy’s
Whiz Bang
America’s Magazine of
Wit, Humor and
Filosophy
May, 1921 Vol. II. No. 20
Published Monthly
W. H. Fawcett, Rural Route No. 2
at Robbinsdale, Minnesota
Entered as second-class matter May 1, 1920, at the post-office at Robbinsdale, Minnesota, under the Act of March 3, 1879.
Price 25 cents $2.50 per year
Contents of this magazine are copyrighted. Republication of any part permitted when properly credited to Capt. Billy’s Whiz Bang.
“We have room for but one soul loyalty and that is loyalty to the American People.”—Theodore Roosevelt.
Copyright 1921
By W. H. Fawcett
Edited by a Spanish and World War Veteran and dedicated to the fighting forces of the United States.
Out on Rural Route No. 2 we haven’t much class, as the saying goes, but we have a lot of fun. We haven’t any bright lights, although the folks about the country have thought so liberally of my little bundle of bunk lately that I have been able to put in a small farm lighting plant in the Whiz Bang house, barn and yard.
Not many Minnesota farmers can afford, in these low-wheat-price days, such a luxury as an electric lighting plant, and so the one put in at the Whiz Bang farm created quite an interest.
Gus, our hired man, thought it would be a good idea to have a sort of celebration over the new electric lights. The idea met with instant approval from Mrs. Bill and the kids. The next question was how to celebrate the great event. Gus suggested a “snoose” party, but as not all of my neighbors chew the Copenhagen breakfast food, his suggestion received a cool reception, particularly from Mrs. Bill, who dislikes the habit. It was left to my twelve-year-old daughter to solve the problem, later in the day, when I discovered her in the loft of the old red barn practicing toe dancing. This suggested to my mind a dancing party.
And so we gave the party. I wired the hay loft with electric lights and dumped a pail full of oatmeal[4] on the floor to make it slippery. We picked Gus as the dance master, and here was his predominating action for the evening:
The only fault we had to find with Gus’ musical attainments was that he didn’t say anything about the dingbusted lighting plant going on the blink during the dance. Something went wrong and the lights went out, and when we came to again, I was horrified. Mrs. Bill says we can’t give any more dances; not if those girls from Sugar Creek are allowed to attend.
Here it is Spring, the poets are with us and the Thursday musicales can now render “The Coming of Spring” by a scanty Aphrodite girlie in true aesthetic rhythm, but I hearken naught to their artificial atmosphere. I crave Mother Nature in all its ruggedness.
Hence I have fared to my log cabin settlement on the shores of Big Pelican lake in northern Minnesota, accompanied by Mrs. Bill, the five kids, my dog Shep, our new perfumed Persian pussy and, last but not least, the good, old pedigreed bull, Pedro. Fred La Page, my French-Canadian friend and the lord and master of the Pequot settlement, threw in a couple of cows in the deal wherein I acquired title to the cabins and the shore property and advised me to bring the pedigreed bull along to keep the cowlets company. And so here we are at Pequot, and as I said before, it is Spring and the birdies are singing in the treelets.
We’ve hardly been here a week when into our wild and wooded midst enters, like an angel from Heaven, a pretty young miss, a graduate of Minneapolis aristocracy and unlearned in the ways of we simple country folk. She had never seen a real pumpkin sprout in the garden of nature and her knowledge of the products of the soil was confined to what she had read in some seminary institution.
The first evening, Gus, our hired man, picked some of Brother La Page’s wild asparagus. We did it up in butter, as was my wife’s custom, and served it in big helpings on the old pine table.
Miss B⸺, our guest and new acquaintance,[6] was guided by etiquette and started to eat her asparagus with a knife and fork, but Gus changed her mind. Now Gus is a careless sort of fellow. When he surrounds a plate of grub he is like time and tide. He waits for no man. He simply surrounds his lips, arms, fingers and what-not in mad haste to consume everything on the table. He is oblivious to anything or anyone else. So Gus grabbed the butt end of a big stock of asparagus and sipped the tip of the vegetable in much the same fashion as a steam suction hose cleaned the streets of Paris in our soldier days. But Miss B⸺ was game. In manner demure, she nervously grasped a luscious piece within her slender fingers. Blushingly, she placed the tender morsel between her pearly teeth. She was a game little girlie, despite her embarrassment. The warm butter slobbered over her but, to her credit, may it be said, she went through the ordeal much like a seasoned veteran.
At this writing, I am glad to say, our angel is rapidly becoming accustomed to backwood etiquette and she now can eat away at any size asparagus just as well—well, almost as efficiently as Gus. I said almost. It would be impossible, I believe, to equal his record.
At last, thank God, Mrs. Bill admits I have one good quality—that of being tender-hearted. I overheard her telling Gus that I was so tender of heart that I wouldn’t kill a poor, defenseless fly, or even beat a carpet.
Pedro, famous pedigreed bull of the Whiz Bang farm, has quite a reputation as a county fair prize winner. Gus, the hired man, decided he’d make a few extra dollars one week while I was “tooting it up” in Minneapolis, so he started charging admission to the many who came to view the noble animal.
A visitor approached Gus the first day of admission charges and inquired as to the cost for himself, wife and nine children, for viewing the bull.
“Not a cent,” promptly replied our faithful man. “Come right in; I want Pedro to see you.”
The girls of Texas, we judge from correspondents, are madly in love with the confection known as the lollypop or all-day sucker. We’ve received several complaints from love-lorn swains requesting that we ask the Texas girls to protect their tresses from the sticky lollypops.
So many Whiz Bang readers have requested that we send them the automobile seat left on our farm by a daring couple while they hiked to Robbinsdale, to report the theft of their motor car, that we have decided to retain it. An auto seat, you know, is valueless without the car.
Gus is a progressive hired man. He progresses from penny ante to nickel heart games to two-bit moonshine. It’s a good thing he’s not very strong for the ladies. He has plenty of bad habits now.
Gus is a great fellow to play pranks. Whenever he wants to chop wood around the smokehouse, he goes to the farm house, opens the back door and rings the dinner bell. All the flies swarm inside and take their places in the dining room. Then Gus closes the doors behind the flies and goes to the wood-pile to work undisturbed. You have to hand it to Gus for originality.
At a seance the other evening the spiritualists were telling of their experiences with residents of other worlds. One man told of conversing with a ghost, another had dined with one. A woman declared she had shaken hands with a departed friend, and others followed suit until it seemed they had exhausted the list of possible activities with spirits.
“We have heard the testimonials of the circle,” said the medium, “but so far nobody has told of being in love with a ghost. Is there anyone here who has had that interesting experience? Has anyone ever loved a ghost?”
“I have, lady,” said an Irishman in the rear of the room.
“Step right up in front, I am sure everybody will be interested in your experience,” said the medium. “In all my life I’ve never heard of an instance of a human loving a ghost.”
“Hell!” sputtered the Irishman, “I thought you said a goat!”
Our Hollywood and Universal City writer is very indignant this month. It appears he attended a movie ball in Los Angeles and was pestered by divan dearies, and so he shoots us a red-hot opinion of these sissies, together with some spicy gossip of the dressing rooms.
By RICHMOND
The male sissified flirt is becoming more and more a social pest. One is liable to bump into this queer creature at any social function, regardless of its exclusiveness.
Let us dwell for a moment upon the great masque ball recently held under auspices of theatrical people at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. It is the latest creation in behalf of the wealthy tourist who visits Southern California.
In this huge pile, which somewhat resembles a great depot, in depth of its long corridors and maze of shops and stands, a scene of merriment occurred that has not been rivalled in the history of winter tropics.
The affair was stopped, it is understood, by order of the hotel management, when word freely was passed that by some hook or crook booze was to be had on an upper floor. Just how booze might get into a great hotel and gradually cause the dance to become rather[10] flushed may have been a problem that puzzled and nettled those responsible for the good name of the house so far as Uncle Sam is concerned. At any event the fiddlers left and the impression went about that the hotel people weren’t going to stand for the party getting rough.
Into the main dining-room, before the evening was well started, two of our leading male comedians strode, both with an ill-concealed bottle protruding from the usual pocket. One of these comedians is a heavy gentleman and a jolly one. The other is gaining fame as a comedian because he never is known to smile.
Just what was in the bottles cannot be proved, but the incident caused some words of criticism from other members of the movie colony, who figured the boys were “putting it on” a little too strong in view of the assemblage present, ever ready to declare that the “movies” are impossible.
But these two cheerful individuals, at the worst, were only mistaken if they really intended to show off or be funny or daring. Many a person present would have been glad to join them, in consideration of their hip pocket protrusion. Yet the occasion, the time, the place, and so on, made it seem a bit garish.
But what about the rouge-soaked males in feminine attire, and displaying toe to hip extremes, garbed in lace tights, whose every movement, look and word indicated absence of the masculine instinct as they pranked and tripped about the ballroom floor, mingling with dainty women and stalwart males who moved[11] uneasily away as the queer folk swung simpering and smirking among them?
Take the two merry boys with the bottles in the main dining-room, a little wild, perhaps, and making somewhat of a show—but, withal, regular men taking a lark as they found it—maybe somewhat “lit up,” but exuding rough masculinity in their uncouth playfulness. To be censured?
One regular he-man, or a party of them, invaded under ordinary circumstances by queer-acting customers, would make short shift of “sissy simps” and abide by the consequences—there being small reason to fear consequences. But a public gathering is different.
By the way, Mildred Harris (Charlie’s used-to-be) led the Grand March with Earl Williams. It is remembered that Williams recently, after his marriage, paid a certain lady a sum (reputed to be $40,000) as a result of a friendship which existed prior to the picture star’s entrance into matrimony.
They are getting to be very businesslike, these ladies. They give, but demand payment at times. But if Earl Williams parted with $40,000, his partner in the dance, fair Mildred, was rejoicing in a little sum of $200,000 or so, which is the amount Charles is said to have settled upon her when they parted at the ways.
Bookkeeping on the leaders of the Grand March, it would appear that Earl and Mildred, between them, were $160,000 ahead of the matrimonial deal, figuring Earl’s loss of $40,000 and Mildred’s winnings of two hundred grand.
Mary and Doug did not mingle with the ballroom[12] dancers to any extent. They are largely home folks and only drop in on occasions at a party, and then usually beat it in jigtime for the fireside.
One of our best-known young newspaper scribes had half the house betting that he was dancing with Edna Purviance, garbed in Turkish emblems. But when she doffed her mask it was not Edna at all, but a charming youngster of the pictures but not well known to fame.
Since Edna has been resurrected in all her beauty for Chaplin’s new picture, “The Kid,” the former friendship between her and Chaplin has been rehashed where the gossip-mongers meet for Wednesday night meeting.
Another pleasing sight was the return of Lucille Carlisle, until recently Larry Semon’s leading lady. Rumor hath it that Lucille and Larry waged a young war about something, as children will. But the soaring young funny man of filmdom and his fair partner were turtle doves who found no one to dance with but themselves.
A false report went out that Bull Montana attended the ball costumed like an ape. This is untrue, for two reasons. One is that Bull wasn’t present, and the other that he needs no costume when imitations of a gorilla are in order. Bull’s face has become his fortune and he is proud of it.
A girl may not let you kiss her, but the chances are she appreciates your wanting to.
Prohibition is morality on a jag.
A good woman is chaste—so is good whiskey.
Virtue, although often lost, is seldom advertised for.
After man came woman and she has been after him ever since.
A woman who can love but once is pretty badly stuck on herself.
It may be peculiar, but a horse can eat best without a bit in his mouth.
Man is made of dust; along comes the water wagon of fate and his name is mud.
Before a man marries, he swears to love; after marriage, he loves to swear.
Human nature shows to better advantage at a dog fight than at a prayer meeting.
Love is blind. Perhaps that accounts for some of the bad shots he has made.
Blessed is the man that is born of little furniture, for it shall be easier to move.
Most women are both good and true; in fact, most of them are too good to be true.
You can never judge the length of a woman’s tongue by the size of her mouth.
Love has been called miserable happiness. Not so, it is what makes happiness miserable.
He is a mean father who has his whiskers shaved off because the baby likes to pull them.
Some women kiss their pet dogs in preference to their husbands. Some men are born lucky.
The girl who wishes she had been born a boy will never make a good wife—she will want to wear the pants.
A pretty woman with brains usually sends some man to the devil. If she hasn’t brains, she goes there herself.
Some men promise to stop smoking after marriage without exacting a similar promise from the girl.
If Mother Eve had been as wise as some of her daughters, what a fool she’d have made of that snake.
A man will promise a woman or a baby anything to keep them quiet. Sometimes he delivers the goods in the case of the baby.
All of us believe in law and order, of course, but a surprisingly large number of people like to see a policeman get whipped.
Of course polygamy is dreadful, but an Oriental wife can come within four or five guesses of knowing where her husband spends his evenings.
The wise virgins of olden days kept their lamps trimmed and burning; those of the present day keep the gas turned low, and they manage to trim as many suckers as their predecessors.
Blessed is the man that is born for woman. He hath a short life and little joy. He springeth up in the morning like a huckleberry bush and is crushed to earth at night by a mother-in-law.
This bit of filosophy is as old as the hills, but like good liquor and fruits of human thought, it grows more rich and mellow with age. Its quaintness is its virtue, and so here it is again.
Man comes into this world without his consent, and leaves it against his will. During his stay on earth his time is spent in one continual round of contraries and misunderstandings.
In his infancy, he’s an angel; in his boyhood, he’s a devil, and in his manhood, he is everything from a lizard up. In his duties, he’s a damphool.
If he raises a family, he’s a chump. If he raises a check, he’s a crook. If he is a poor man, he is a poor manager and has no sense. If he is rich, he is dishonest but considered smart. If he is in politics he is a grafter and a thief. If he is out of politics, you cannot place him as he is an undesirable citizen. If he donates to foreign missions, he does it for show; if he doesn’t, he is stingy and a tightwad.
When he comes into the world, they all want to kiss him; before he leaves it, they all want to kick him.
If he dies young, there was a great future before him. If he lives to a ripe, old age, he is only in the way, just living to save funeral expenses. So Life is just one damn thing after another.
Everything has gone down except paper and envelopes. They are stationery.
Dere Uncle Billy: Since Ay writing you las time Ay bane having swell time acting in moving pictures. Las week Ay working in Sex picture in Hollywood Studyo and we got one big scene where leading man be banker faller and git fresh with hired girl while him’s wife bane gone out to week-end party. Ayskol be butler with short tail coat and gold buttons made of brass. When somebody kome in Ayskol stand by door and take him’s card on pie-plate. Director he say, “Sven, when banker git fresh you skol yump in an’ poke him’s nose yust like real life with plenty pep.” Banker git fresh alright an’ you bet Ay show Director Ay am dam gude actor. Ay poke leading man so he don’t wake up till half past sax an’ dey don’t finish scene till next week. Leading man he git sore on me an’ try to git me fired but Ayskol told him if he enta shut up Ay poke him ’gain so he keep still an’ Ay don’t lose may Yob.
Week behind las’ Ay playing in cave-man picture with whiskers glued on may face so Ay look like Smith Bros. on cough drop box. They got real elephant from Universal City an’ glue whiskers all over him too, so he skol be a baskardon. We go out in woods with a lot[18] of other animals an’ monkey ’round all day yumping in and out hole in hill some fallers dig for cave.
Ay meet rich woman that say she skol star me yust so soon her husband go to Seattle. She gat big lemonzine an’ diamonds an’ she shake her shimmy when she walking. She bane gude skout all right, you bat my life, an’ she say Ay gat fine fizzic. She like strong faller an’ she like me be strong for her. Ay bat your life Ay gitting new suit from Foreman Clark an’ silk shirt with blue stripe. She standing in gude with assistant Director an’ git me gude Yobs right long. Ay meet four more Swedes here in pictures an’ they take me to place one night they call wild party an’ Ay drink some coctaila made out of prune yuice and Skloan’s Liniment. When Ay got more news Ay skol let you know right off. Moving picture game bane gude bet for faller with plenty pep.
Goodby,
SVENS PETERSON.
Post Chips: If you see may brother Olaf tole him Ay say bootleg business bane pretty gude out here yust now an’ if he want to kom out Ay skol git him in on ground floor.—S. P.
As full of dynamite and fusel oil as ever, Reverend Morrill returns to Minnesota this month brimful of information on the South and Central American countries, which for the past three months he had been touring for the Whiz Bang, and here’s his first report. Incidentally, Reverend Morrill’s home in Minneapolis is broken into by burglars nearly every time he goes away on a Whiz Bang jaunt, and last fall he lost $3,000 worth of choice red-eye. This last trip he left a note: “Dear Boys: You won’t find any booze or Liberty Bonds, but some good books, especially this Bible, which says, ‘Thou shalt not steal.’ God forgive you—I do. G. L. Morrill.” Whether or not the note was responsible is undetermined, but nothing was missing this time.
BY REV. “GOLIGHTLY” MORRILL
Pastor People’s Church, Minneapolis, Minn.
“Easy is the descent to hell”—except by way of Venezuela, at whose ports of entry one suffers so many inconveniences in the form of passport visés, custom fees, red-tape, delay and insolence, that if the Devil wishes to sustain his reputation of a conductor of luxurious pleasure-tours to the infernal regions, he should immediately get rid of his disagreeable officials there. At La Guayra, custom authorities rob the traveler of time, money and patience. These[20] sun-burnt bandits would steal the pennies from the eyes of their dead father, and body-snatch their dead grandmother to sell her entrails for sausage-casings. The visitor should be on his guard, too, lest the city’s dark-eyed daughters of delight steal away his heart.
La Guayra señoritas, like the scenery, are wild, beautiful and romantic, though there are many wizened witches, rheumatic, mustachioed and flea-bitten, who make one sea-sick on land. The local enchantresses give the stranger a good (bad) time—as well as a choice assortment of undesirable souvenirs. It is a pestiferous port where the laudable profession of prostitution is much practised. These moral lepers are much more dangerous than the physical ones in the big asylum in the outskirts. Gay girls throw kisses to the tenderfoot as he walks the streets—a most sanitary and microbeless pastime.
Here I entered a girls’ school where the young misses were learning much and not missing anything, for as a practical object-lesson in physiology a naked little boy had strolled in from the street and was roaming about the room. Some of the citizens are quite devout and show their gratitude to God for his numerous blessings. I passed a saloon bearing the inscription, “Gracios a Dios” (Thanks to God). Thus do the simple-minded people obey the Scriptural command, “In everything give thanks.”
A few minutes’ train ride takes you to Maiquitia, where there is a popular shrine and a more popular brewery. At the other end of the town lies Macuto,[21] where, if lucky, you may “clean up” yourself in a sea-bath, or a pile of filthy lucre at the roulette table.
As our vessel steamed away from La Guayra, I thought what a magnificent city it was—from the stern of a ship.
In Valencia I read a placard in a church admonishing the men not to wink at the girls during service. The town had just been ravaged by a fever called “Economica,” because it was said the people caught it in the morning, languished in the afternoon and died at night.
At the Hotel Los Baños, Puerto Cabello, one goes in swimming au naturel. Many modest maidens are only clad in a blush, making a tableau vivant. Verily, as the guide-book saith, “The natural beauties of the place are charming.” The harbor is deep; so is the despair of the political prisoners who I saw working in rags. One poor fellow was toiling away stark naked among the breakers and sharp rocks. It is reported that the victims are beaten in the early morning, during the call of the reveille, to cover up their cries.
Caracas, the capital of Venezuela, lies at a 3,000-foot “hell”evation above the sea. It is the “Paris of South America” with its churches, parks, public buildings, Pantheon, palace and promenades. The nerve-center of the city is Plaza Bolivar, with an equestrian statue of the hero who stood for liberty, and around which congregate people who stand for everything. Certain “Carac”teristics make this a viva “city” and lubri “city.” The climate is cool, but tempered by the[22] “melting” glance of the bonita muchachas, whose smiles would ripen peaches on a wall.
The dapper younkers of Caracas pursue their studies at the University, and the señoritas on the highway. Their “curriculum” also includes the race-track, bull-ring, roulette-wheel (as omnipresent as the Victoria coach-wheel), and art works, imported from Paris and Barcelona, as vile and vivid as the paintings of Parrhasius. Even picture portraits of Beethoven and Wagner are made by grouping together nude portions of female figures.
Lottery-tickets are not the only things sold in town. Mothers come to the Plaza with their daughters for sale. Wantons from the suburb lupanars solicit under shadows of the trees, and their “Hist! hist!” is as familiar as the sibilant call of the filles publiques in Paris, who figure so frequently in the tales of De Kock, Sue and Maupassant.
At “Madame Gaby’s” mansion of shame I found a girl scarcely 12 years old. How shocking! But one expects to be shocked in a city that is subject to earthquakes. Not only pedestrians, but pederasts, i. e., “maricos” or “fairies,” haunt the streets and parks of Caracas. Powdered and painted, they promenade with mincing gait and ogling glance, marching to the music of the band and making “overtures” to the bystanders. The police know of this disgusting depravity, and of the hordel resorts “for men only,” but wink at it. This is as rank and rotten as anything I ever saw in Algiers, or the Cairo “fish-market,” where men were dressed as women.
In old Egypt the Temples of Isis were centers of disgusting filth. In ancient Greece, even among her greatest orators and philosophers, “Socratic love” was proverbial and portrayed on the stage in the plays of Aristophanes, although the Athenians officially punished it with death. Livy, in his History of Rome, castigates this heresy of love. The Ganymed pervert, Geiton, is the hero of Petronius’ sinister novel, “Satyricon.” Martial’s epigrams and Juvenal’s satires flay this moral decadence. Out from Naples I visited the island of Capri, where the Roman goat Emperor, Tiberius, hired companies of catamites for his entertainment. Domitan forbade the practice while Christianity did much to suppress it. The student of history knows the infamous lives of Russian rulers and of Henry III, of France, in the seventeenth century. St. Paul scored the Romans for this sin—what an epistle could he indite against the Caracas “maricos” who amuse, instead of disgust, the Caraquenians, who seem to believe with Baudelaire that “La Débauche et la Mort sont deux amiables filles” (Debauch and Death are two amiable girls).
The worst spot in Venezuela is the despot dictator, President Gomez. His authority is absolute, with the accent on the “loot.” He takes what he wants; a man’s personal property, wife or daughter. Dark stories make him a modern Bluebeard. He is a moral and physical leper. Rumor says that he sacrifices children and drinks their blood to cure his maladies. Gomez is the government; the legislative, executive and judicial branches consisting of the cockpit, race-track[24] and palace harem. He has panderers who scour the country to procure beautiful women for him. His personal and public character is so putrid, that many of the inhabitants would like to elect him president of a Guano island, with a salary in Guano. In the land of Bolivar, the Liberator, Gomez muzzles the press, suppresses free speech, maintains an army of spies, and has imprisoned some of the best and brainiest men of Venezuela in horrible dungeons for the crime of loving liberty. The following would seem to be his daily prayer:
“My Father which art in Hell, powerful be thy name.
Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in Venezuela as it is in Hell.
Give me my daily bread, booze, and beef, whether everybody else starves or not.
And forgive me my debts, but not as I forgive my debtors.
And tempt me not into revolutions with my neighbors, and deliver me from the evil of any defeat; for thine and mine is the kingdom, and the power, and glory, forever. Amen.”
Coffee, cacao, cane, cattle, corn and illegitimate children are the principal products of the country. At one time the official census for three years in Caracas gave legitimate births as 3,848, and illegitimate as 3,753. The ratio is even worse in the country districts. A Venezuela bachelor who hasn’t a half-dozen mistresses, has lost caste and is looked down on; a married[25] man is expected to run two or three home establishments. Love is free, but drugs are costly. A friend of mine in the interior had a dear motherly lady come to him and offer her three daughters for five dollars a week.
’Tis said Alexander the Great wanted to destroy the antique town of Lamsachus because of its Priapus worship and obscene rites. Caracas was overturned by an earthquake in 1812, when 12,000 people perished. If that was a visitation of God’s wrath on account of its wickedness, another punishment is due, for it is in the class of the “Cities of the Plain”—
For a miserable hour the new squad had been drilled by the sergeant, and then this army product remarked sweetly to the men:
“When I was a child I had a set of wooden soldiers. There was a poor little boy in the neighborhood and after I had been to Sunday school one day and listened to a talk on the beauties of charity I was softened enough to give them to him. Then I wanted them back and cried, but my mother said:
“‘Don’t cry, Bertie, some day you will get your wooden soldiers back.’
“And believe me, you lob-sided, mutton-headed, goofus-brained set of certified rolling-pins, that day has come.”
Several officers were seated around the mess table in France. One serious-minded major was in habit of taking a French girl out to lunch two or three times per week and taking a French lesson afterward.
“How much do you figure your French lessons have cost you to date?” queried one of his companions, winking around the board.
“Roughly?” asked the major.
“No, respectably.”
My brother Roscoe, who is a captain in the Air Service, tells the following:
Officers in a garrison school were studying “Small Problems for Infantry.” Turning to the large-sized map on the wall, the major instructor called upon one officer, Jones by name.
“Jones,” said he, “your battalion is camped here at cross-roads 435 (indicating on map). It is enemy country and you are told to cross this cornfield toward farmhouse half-mile distant for the purpose of bringing in the farmer or somebody who might furnish information of the movements of the enemy. It is in September, the corn is cut but not shocked, and as you make your way across the field you suddenly ran into two young ladies. What do you do?”
“I-I-I-I don’t know,” falteringly replied the second looey. “I didn’t get time to study the lesson today. But, did I understand you to say that the corn had not been shocked?”
To Captain Billy (thru channels)—It is requested that the Captain give his expert advice on the following subjects: (a) Girl in question insists on wearing filmy Georgette waists, which are just about as efficient as chicken wire as far as concealment is concerned. There is no objection on my part to looking through them, but do not desire others to have same advantage. (b) Passing along our main drag the other day, observed squab with brilliant green stockings. Promptly remembered General Order No. 2, and followed it out to best of my ability, when another one hove in sight with red, white and blue effect on limbs. Puzzled to know which color to pay attention to in case it happens again.—Gerry Ed.
Indorsements in reply—(a) Would suggest that you drape your girl in question in heavier attire. (b) You did perfectly right in observing both sets of stockings, as your general orders are: “To walk my post in a military manner, observing everything that takes place within sight or hearing.”
Dear Captain Billy—What is most like a hen stealing?—Dismal Dan.
A Cock Robin, I s’pose.
Dear Bill—Who is the lightweight champion of America?—Private Stock.
My coal dealer.
Dear Captain Billy—What is a husband?—Will B. Schmellie.
Husbands are very useful things to have about the house. Caught young they make useful pets and can be taught to do a number of tricks. Some husbands are domesticated and stay at home in the evenings. I knew one who used to spend every evening at home. He suffered with gout. Others stay out late and then, having good friends, they get carried straight in. The duty of a husband is to touch the cash register and look pleasant, and so he spent his time trying to live round a seven by six family on a two by three salary. Very few husbands ever live any longer than is absolutely necessary.
dEAR WhiZ bAng Bil—my name is OLE. My brother GUS he go away 7 yeres ago to work in Minnesoty milkking cows. Ay skol lak to know if your hired man is my brother GUS, as you SaY in yure magazeen that your hired man GUS has strong feet.—Ole Skolstad.
No, Ole, my hired man is not your brother. He says that all hired men have a bad odor about their pedals, due, he says, to the brand of snuff they snoose.
Dear Skipper Bill—Do you like Popcorn Balls?—Sig. R. Liter.
I don’t know; I never was to one.
Dear Whiz Bang Bill—What’s the extreme penalty for bigamy?—Ophelia Anckel.
Two mothers-in-law.
Dear Skipper—My husband stays out every night and he always says he sits up with Jack, but he won’t tell me his friend’s last name. Can you advise me?—Grace Gravydisch.
Your husband probably is attending Jack Pot.
Dear Farmer Bill—As you are living on a farm, perhaps you may be able to give me the correct definition of a filly.—Cobb Webb.
A filly, my dear sir, is a lady horse that has never had a honeymoon.
Dear Skipper—I’ve heard the expression, “The Evening Wore On,” and will you please tell me what it wore?—E. Normous Nutt.
Must have been wearing The Close of the Day.
Dear Skipper—What would you recommend as a good hair tonic?—Rundown Ike.
Wine of Pepsin, but I didn’t think they used it on their hair any more.
Dear Captain Bill—How may I become popular as an aesthetic dancer?—Miss Fitt.
Simply shiver and shake and look wicked.
Dear Skipper—Why is a sailor usually referred to as an “Old Salt”?—Cap Pistol.
After saltpeter, which is used so much in the navy as an ingredient in the manufacture of high explosive shells.
Dear Capt. Billy—What is a Peruvian Phump?—G. Howie Pants.
An animal found only in the Arctic Circle, and having two or more speeds.
Dear Captain Bill—What’s the difference between a model woman and a woman model?—Krazy Kookoo.
A model woman is a bare possibility, while a woman model is a naked fact.
Dear Professor Bill—What range of mountains did Napoleon cross, what year, and what mode of travel?—Hyley Shocked.
I am not much of an historian but I think it was in 1492 that Napoleon crossed the Rockies in a canoe.
Dear Capt. Bill—I have lived in the city all my life but have decided to become a farmer. Can you tell me whether or not macaroni is a profitable crop to grow?—Carse E. Noma.
They don’t grow macaroni any more, they make it. Just take a big long hole and put dough around it. I have been told that in some foreign countries they use this hole for vermicelli.
“The Bull is Mightier Than the Bullet”
Less than two short years ago the Whiz Bang was founded, upon my return from the army, on the Whiz Bang Farm, hoping in so doing that the veterans and their friends of Robbinsdale and vicinity would be supplied with samples of the pep and ginger we had in the army and navy and marine corps. In our opening number, we expressed a faint hope for “big time” sometime, and that we could follow in the footsteps of the Cherry Sisters of vaudeville.
Our hopes and aspirations have been more than fulfilled. In twenty months, without the aid of advertising or circulation campaigns, and without a single subscription agent in the field, we have grown from 3,500 circulation in October, 1919, to more than 300,000 guaranteed paid circulation with this issue, May, 1921. America surely has given us a grand reception, and we are grateful. Next month we are planning on letting our Canadian neighbors get our bundle of farm filosophy, and as quickly as newsdealers can be communicated with, we will open up new territory.
Here’s thanks to you, folks, one and all. And we want you to consider yourself as associate editors. If[33] you have a story, or a joke, or a question for Captain Billy to answer, or a verse, or prose, or a catchy saying—send it in.
And as a grand finale, so to speak, the Whiz Bang will stay in the fight for the rights of all mankind to enjoy that liberty—the full measure of our personal and national liberty—for which we bucked the bean line in khaki and blue in the recent war. We will stand firmly opposed to any invasion of our inherent rights to the pursuit of happiness, health and prosperity.
The rôle of the drum is anything but hum-drum. The ear-drum recognizes the sound of a drum whether the instrument is side, snare, brass or kettle. In travel I have seen and heard drums big and little, round, cylindrical, high and low, loud and soft, wild and weird; played by head, hand and foot—played fast and slow in life and death, peace and war—played by savage and by civilized man in the desert or orchestra hall.
Savages, whose natural argument was a blow on the head to beat out their enemies’ brains, naturally fell into a percussion style of music and invented the drum, often the sole as well as the chief musical instrument.
The drum figures in this world from religion to ragtime—from the Salvation Army to the jazz band.
Deborah’s timbrel was a sort of drum. The old tom-tom at an Indian snake-charming doubtless had its counterpart in Egypt in 1600 B. C., and one listens[34] to that same noise in modern Cairo. The dull sound that waked my dreams in the Alhambra was from a drum the Moor had brought from the East after a crusade.
Music is a universal language, and the despised, unmusical drum has a polyglot tongue. All other musical instruments have their speech of sentiment, love and emotion, but the voice of the drum knows the eloquent language of liberty and can get more volunteers for God, home and native land than all the orators. The roll of the drum, like that of the sea, fills the soul’s shore-line and its every bay and gulf. Heine says that the history of the storming of the Bastile cannot be correctly understood until we know how the drumming was done.
The reveille of the drum means that it is time to get up, and there is a fable of its resurrection meaning in the old legend of soldiers, fallen in battle, who by night rose from the grave in the battlefield, and with drummer at their head, marched back to their native home.
There is a pathetic story in French history of Napoleon’s nameless drummer-boy being swept from the ranks, by the sudden dash of an avalanche, into an Alpine valley. He was uninjured and the drum still hung suspended from his neck. He waved his hands to the soldiers 200 feet above him and began to drum, playing the tattoo, the reveille, the advance and the charge. But there was no time to rescue him, the soldiers passed on, and the last thing they heard in the clear, cold air was the beat of a funeral march.[35] Then the little drummer boy lay on the snow bank to die with the snow for his shroud and the falling night for his pall. For years the veterans of the Italian campaign hushed their voices at the campfire, as they told the story of Napoleon’s drummer-boy, whose slender body lay frozen beside his drum in the silent solitudes of the snowy Alps.
In patriotic art we have the spirit of ’76. Germany has used the drum as a favorite means to raise recruits—we have done it against her, and by God’s grace will give her a drum-head court martial before long, though the world is waiting for the time Tennyson speaks of, “When the war-drum throbs no longer.”
The drum is the heart-beat of a liberty-loving humanity. The Fourth of July drum recalls the spirit of 1917, when Uncle Sam started to make the world habitable and we prayed that the American eagle might beat out the brains of Germany’s two-headed vulture; recalls the spirit of the Spanish War to give Cuba and the Philippines human rights; recalls the War of the Rebellion for the union of all creeds, colors and conditions; recalls the war of Mexico for a square deal for Americans; recalls the war of 1812 for free commerce of our ships upon the high seas; recalls the war of 1776 for liberty by the noble colonists.
I believe in the drum. Can you beat it? Hurrah for Uncle Sam, the drum-major of the world in the march for freedom of body, mind and soul, always and everywhere!
Several persons of our acquaintance have asked why we refer to marriage in the same sentence with war. There is no difference.
A fellow meets a girl and decides that she is the woman he wants to “battle” through life with.
You “present arms” and she “falls in.”
You talk it over and decide on an “engagement.” At the marriage license bureau you “sign up.” A minister “swears you in.”
There are only a few “skirmishes” during the courtship. The real “fighting” starts after marriage. That’s when a man thinks he’s a “Colonel,” and he’s only a nut.
In the house, as well as on the “battlefield,” they use “hand-grenades,” such as flatirons, pots, and rolling pins.
The wife is usually a good “rifler.” She rifles your pockets every night, takes your large money, and “confines you to quarters.”
Whether you have done anything or not, she always has you on the “mess detail.” She makes her “counter attacks” in the department stores, and she knows how to “charge.”
She is your “Commanding Officer,” and you are her “Supply Officer.”
In the game the fiercest fight is always to come. Wait until the “infantry” arrives. Instead of “shouldering arms,” you shoulder the baby. On the battlefields, shells may screech and scream, but they have nothing on the kid. You get your “walking papers” every night. This is the only “hike” you take.
In war, you sign up for four years. There is no such clause as that in your wedding certificate. You can get exemption from war on account of marriage, but you can’t get exempt from marriage on account of war.
One outraged pulpit orator states that when the average society girl enters the ballroom in these depraved times she has on only four garments, but we take it for granted he didn’t count shoes and stockings in making up his estimate.
Now one of our most eminent medical scientists announces that hiccoughs may be stopped immediately by placing one’s index finger on the patient’s fifth curvicular nerve and pressing hard, but we must find out definitely where the fifth curvicular nerve is before trying this simple remedy on the next hiccoughing girl friend we happen to be with.
A little fun occasionally is all right, but life is too short and too serious to spend it all around the monkey cage.
Another red-blooded verse, dedicated to the great American rambler, will appear in the Whiz Bang for June—“The Gila Monster Route,” being the tale of a hobo on the Southern Pacific “Sunset” route. Excerpts from the poem give the swing:
Recently the Whiz Bang received a letter from the cellhouse of Alcatraz federal penitentiary, located on an island overlooking San Francisco—the dread of the army—and in this letter was a pathetic poem from a prisoner, who begs that we publish it for the benefit of the humans on the “great outside.”
This appeal also will appear in the June Whiz Bang.
So many calls have been received at the Whiz Bang Farm for back copies containing certain Smokehouse Poems that we’ve decided to put out a book containing many of the gems of past issues, as well as new red-blooded poems, to be ready for our readers early this fall. The book of Smokehouse Poetry will be in addition to our new Winter Annual—Follies[39] of 1921-22, which will be ready for you in October with ALL NEW STUFF—jokes, jingles, stories, prose, poetry, pot pourri, advice to love-lorn and love-shorn, and, oh, we just hate to tell you of the many bright surprises.
We’ve also had many calls for the works of Robert W. Service, which we must refer to the publishers, Barse & Hopkins, 21 Division Street, Newark, N. J.
By William Ernest Henley
The Whiz Bang has received so many requests for “Toledo Slim” that we will herewith publish this virile poem of the underworld.
In the April issue, the Whiz Bang published the noted poem of Lt. Col. John McCrae, “In Flanders Field.” Here is his other masterpiece, “The Anxious Dead,” and also “America’s Answer,” by R. W. Lillard, and “Poppies,” by J. Eugene Chrisman.
By Lt.-Col. John McCrae
By R. W. Lillard
By J. Eugene Chrisman
This poem was not written by Kipling, nor has it passed the scrutiny of our village schoolmaster, but what it lacks in rhetoric is made up in punch. “I made this up about a girl that turned me down over a shipmate of mine, and will thank you to publish it for the benefit of other love-sick gobs,” writes the author, a sailor at the Philadelphia naval station.
BY BUDD L. McKILLIPS
Author of “After the Raid”
This talk of blue laws gets my goat; reformers make me sore. I’d like to take them by the throat and kick them through the door. Time was I used to drink some beer, and maybe sing a song—perhaps I got soused once a year, and didn’t think it wrong.
But now if I desire a drink, some basement I must find, and if I get by with a wink perhaps I may go blind. The beer I drank was harmless stuff, ’twas made of hops and grain; the hootch today is made of snuff, ground glass and paint and rain.
Three weeks ago I took a drink—just one, I took no more; if I had two I really think I’d whipped an army corps. The one I took was bad enough, it stood me on my neck, and then I started to get rough and made the place a wreck. Somebody called three policemen in, they sat upon my brow and kicked me underneath the chin—I’ve got the marks there now. A riot call brought out more troops who battered me with clubs, then locked me in the city coops with ninety other dubs.
My friends chipped in and paid my fine of thirty thousand bucks, the doctors patched my head and[48] spine—that cost five hundred shucks. When I got well my friends I told I’d never drink again, but soon I caught a beastly cold that filled my soul with pain. In olden days I’d hit the hay with half a pint of “Crow” and sure as fate in half a day the cold was sure to go.
This time I hunted up a doc and told him of my ills. His heart was harder than a rock—he gave me quinine pills. I took the pills to the lagoon and fed them to the ducks, then bought a quart of fresh-made “moon” that cost me seven bucks.
That night in bed I took a shot to drive the cold away; I woke up in a vacant lot at 10 a. m. next day.
From now on henceforth I am through with booze that makes me fight with elephants of vivid hue, and sleep in trees at night. No more I’ll sample raisin “skee” that causes much turmoil. I’ll take a chance on T. N. T., bay rum or croton oil.
There’s not much fun in life because there’s naught but woe and pain that’s come from passing foolish laws—I guess I’ll go to Spain.
I went to kiss my girl good-night and she had no teeth. Every time I kissed her I saw a gum drop.
I can’t place you, but your breath smells familiar.
Never steal a watch, because a lawyer will eventually get the case and you the works.
I want a girl and I want her bad.
Is your boss broadminded?
I should say so; he was out with two last night.
Pat and Mike staggered weakly to the rail of the pitching liner. “Begorra,” said Pat, “Oi don’t blame Christ for walking.”
If ignorance is a blister, don’t be an abscess.
Girls, whatever you do—don’t get married. Bring your children up the same way.
Love is like hash—you must have confidence to enjoy it.
No, Geraldine, just because a cranky woman is sometimes called an old cat is no reason you should refer to a voting woman as a poll cat.
Our motto for May: “You’re a million miles from nowhere when you hold her dainty hand.”
We lost our good spirit when they took away our booze.
(From the Des Moines Register.)
Will the elderly gentleman, owner of the Cadillac sedan, who left young widow on Sixth avenue, a week before Christmas, let me hear from him through this paper? Strictly confidential.
(From the Montezuma, Colo., Journal)
A. O. Lindquist, who was married three weeks ago, is able to be out again and will likely be able to assume his duties as a carpenter and contractor soon.
(From the Marengo Republican-News)
Baptist Church, 7:30 p. m.—Popular evening service. Subject, “Fools and Idiots.” A large number are expected.
(From the Miller, S. D., Press)
Next Sunday morning the minister is going to, in his sermon, reveal: “How To Meet the Demand for Wine.” The superintendent of the Sunday School announces that the supplies for the quarter are at hand and may be secured by the teachers at the church.
(From the Kewanee Star-Courier)
Notice—I have been getting numerous calls for nursing. I wish not to be called as my health does not permit me to overdo. Especially I have two canaries and house flowers to care for. I may, when weather gets warmer take a few cases. Mrs. Lizzie Hague, 638 Pine.
(From the Omaha World-Herald.)
Female cinnamon color canary wants to mate. Walnut 1936.
(From Seattle Times)
Mrs. Hausman can accommodate 2 or 3 young men. 721 9th Ave. Elliott 2161.
(From Pittsburg Press)
BLACK OR WHITE?—What about it? Margaret Livingston, Ince movie star, says white stockings make the legs appear larger and more shapely. She’d get our vote in red ones. Some negligee, Peggy has. No, dear, you’re wrong—negligee is wearing apparel.
(From Memphis Commercial Appeal)
Housekeeper wanted at once; must have a child, by a widower 60 years of age. Nice furnished home and farm. Will give an interest. Wood Lawn Farm, Havana, Ark.
(From Grand Rapids Press)
WANTED—Breast milk; must be on west side.—66101.
(From East Peoria Post.)
New Years Day our young friends, Miss Hattie Cochran and Mr. Elias King without any ceremony at all were united in the bonds of holy wedlock.
(From the Oberlin, O., Tribune.)
WANTED—A husband; must be a sinner; none other need apply. P. O. Box 61, Oberlin.
There are three kinds of females—foolish girls, damphoolish girls and married women.
Strong perfume has never yet become an excuse for not bathing.
When a man becomes so well acquainted with a girl that she tells him “Now, stop,” he is fairly well acquainted.
Most men have quit wearing suspenders, but that’s about all some women wear.
There are a number of ways to kiss a girl, but only one way to kiss a married woman.
A girl with a quart of hootch is more popular these days than the girl with a ton of good looks.
Telephone girls who say over the wire “Numbah, please,” are the same ones who at home shout “Hey, pass them spuds.”
Long ago I was taught that “All is not gold that glitters,” and more recently I have found out that all who flap are not flappers.
Girls who live in glass houses should always pull down the shades.
Girls with highly polished finger nails are generally the ones with runs in silk hosiery.
When women get their heads together and whisper, they’re talking about some other woman; when men do the same they’re discussing the latest recipe for home-made hootch.
A woman who will faint at the sight of a mouse will tell you that the prize fight she saw was very tame.
A friend of mine wanted to buy a vamp table. I didn’t know what a vamp table was. He said it was a table with straight legs and without anything on top.
There are some girls who, at a theater, insist upon whispering to their escort that “the man on the other side is trying to flirt with me.”
Chewing tobacco seems to have passed out with booze and suspenders.[54] A real “man” nowadays wears a belt and a wrist watch and smokes pills.
Somebody has said recently that jazz music is the voice of the devil. But who the devil cares?
When a woman threatens to scream you can be sure she won’t.
An optimist is a member of the bartenders’ union who is still paying dues.
There are some married women who would like to play football providing there weren’t any goal posts.
A boxer who fights his battles in the ring instead of in the columns of the newspapers is a sufficient attraction these days to merit considerable attention.
A young woman tries to please man. When she gets old she tries to please God.
It’s a long way from Los Angeles to Palm Beach but the styles in bathing suits of the Mack Sennett queens and the dames of high society seem about the same.
Electric lights were never made for courting. In the days of the gas jet a fellow could turn down the light a little at a time. Now he has to snap off the electricity all at once and take a chance.
There may be a good many arguments against the restoration of the good old four per cent beer, but right now we can’t think of a single one.
There were more divorces, more murders, more burglaries in New York in 1920 than in 1919. Hooray for prohibition!
As we remember the arguments of the prohibitionists a dry country would be nothing short of Utopia. There wasn’t going to be any crime nor any marital difficulties nor were any young girls going to go wrong. It is a merry world, my masters.
It costs so much nowadays to get a house to live in and enough booze for the house warming that there isn’t anything left for furniture.
Belle—We can’t use your story, but you win the diamond studded stomach pump.
Sweet Marie—The bridegroom should not see the bride on the day of the wedding until he meets her in the church or in front of Court Commissioner Bates. However, if you have any apprehensions, you might ask your big brother to keep an eye on him. Men are so fickle, you know.
Dolly—It is not, generally speaking, correct to send invitations for the wedding and christening simultaneously. Circumstances quite often alter cases, however.
Will E. Crowder—You should not doubt. Did you not say you met her walking home after an automobile ride?
Grace—Congratulations. A baby will make love stronger, days shorter, nights longer, bankroll smaller, home happier, and clothes shabbier. I know, for I’ve brought up five of them.
To a chemistry student who drank Sulphuric Acid thinking it was water.
Mrs. Murphy was getting the supper for the children on Saturday night, when a young woman came to her door.
“I’m a collector for the Drunkards’ Home,” she said, “Could you help us?”
“Come around tonight and I’ll give you Murphy,” she replied, as she went on with her work.
Two more cases of talking sickness have been reported. It is needless to say that both of them are women.
Chapter I.
“Glad to meet you.”
Chapter II.
“Isn’t the moon beautiful?”
Chapter III.
“Just one more, dear … please!”
Chapter IV.
“Do you…?”
“I do…”
Chapter V.
Da—da—da—da.
Chapter VI.
“Whereinell’s dinner?”
(Terre Haute, Ind., Post)
Gertrude Hoffman, classic dancer, was considering the advisability of muzzling her pet snake today. While she was dancing the “Princess of Rajah” last night, the reptile bit her on the left leg, between the overture and the climax.
We see by the public print where Richard G. Badger is the author of a new book on “Nervous Children—Their Prevention and Management.”
A French officer, a military attaché in Washington, was invited to a golden wedding. Had a fine time and desired to thank his host upon departing.
“Had ze gran’ evening,” quoth he. “Ze Americain is ver’ nice to ze Frenchman. But I would ver’ much like to know what is zees Golden Wedding?”
His host explained in detail that he and his better half had been living together for fifty long years in perfect harmony and accord.
“Wondairful! Wondairful!” exclaimed the Frenchman, patting his hands together excitedly. “And now after fifty years zis wondairful wedding.”
Prohibition agents rush in where bootleggers fear to tread.
Two soldiers in a negro regiment, says the Gold Chevron, were boasting about their company buglers.
“G’long wit’ you boy,” said one; “you ain’t got no booglers. We is got the boogler, and when that boy wraps his lips around that horn and blows pay call, it sounds jest like a symphony band playin’.”
“Well, if you like music, that’s all right; but if you is yearnin’ fo’ food, you wants a boogler with a hypnotic note, like we is got. Boy, when Ah hears ole Custard-Mouth Jones discharge his blast Ah looks at mah beans and Ah says:
“Strawberries, behave yo’selves! You is crowdin’ all the whip cream out of mah dish.”
Remember, my son, that a giggling girl is apt to become a cackling woman.
Four or five jolly drummers gathered in the smoking compartment of a Pullman car, and soon their conversation drifted to the great problem of the day—women. In the party also was a frock-coated pastor of serious mien.
The salesmen winked at each other as the minister entered, and then, as if to have some harmless pleasure, one after another started telling of the wonderful virtues of the knights of the grip.
“I am often away from home for four weeks at a time,” one salesman commenced, “and I never even look at another woman.”
“And I am so bound up in the charms of my wife that I’m ashamed to tip the check girls,” declared the next one.
“Why, my wife is so good to me that I won’t allow a woman to wait on me in a restaurant,” said another.
Their conversation sounded too much like unadulterated bunk for the good minister to swallow, and he joined the party by offering a silk hat to any salesman present who could truthfully say he had always been faithful to his wife. The pastor won his point and the conversation soon drifted to other subjects.
The next day one of the salesmen arrived home and soon told his wife of the jolly party in the Pullman smoker.
“But, John,” she said, “why didn’t you take him up?” John’s active salesman brain worked quickly.
“Why, Mable, you know I look like hell in a silk hat.”
A Whiz Bang gob writes to ye editor and asserts that our story in the April issue about the Scotchman who was hurt while carrying hootch was incorrect, in that the real hero was a sailor. This is the true history of the case, he avers:
The gob was coming down the street with two bottles under his pea-coat, when he saw a fellow shipmate in a fight with three men across the way. He promptly sailed across and waded in. In fifteen minutes or so he heaved to as he felt a warm liquid running down his side. Rolling his eyes heavenward, he groaned, “Oh, Gawsch! I hope I’m stabbed!”
The incorrigible joker stood outside the Great Synagogue, as the Chosen were pouring out, last Shobboz, and declaimed: “There is a divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them as we may.”
And a fat, greasy-looking little man sidled up to him and wheezed:
“Do you vant to thsee the rabbi, misther?”
He had been married about six months, during which time he had made the most strenuous endeavors to abandon his former naughty ways and to give up his intemperate bachelor friends and the numerous pretty ladies with whom he had so long been associated. But it happened one day that he fell in with a very dear friend, till in a somewhat dazed condition he eventually fetched up at his “home sweet” ’round about five o’clock on the following morning. Stealthily he crept upstairs to bed and wifie being, as he imagined, asleep, equally stealthily did he start to undress in the cold, gray light of dawn. For a time all went well; then suddenly a voice rose above the stillness:
“Charles, where’s your vest?”
Charles pulled himself together rapidly and endeavored to review the situation.
“My dear,” he replied confidentially, after much mental effort, “upon my soul, I believe I must have left it—in the cab!”
Unlucky months for getting married: Jan., Feb., Mar., Apr., May, June, July, Aug., Sept., Oct., Nov., Dec.
My girl brought me a basket of eggs. As she stepped up the steps, I said, “What beautiful eggs.” And when she reached me she slapped my face.
Only five months to wait for the second October Whiz Bang annual.
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| 1 | Catalogue “A” illustrating 500 nude, semi-nude and bathing girl subjects, by prepaid express, for $1.00; 6 for | $5.00 |
| 1 | Catalogue “B” illustrating 400 film star and bathing girl subjects, by mail, prepaid, for 25c; 5 for | 1.00 |
| 1 | Catalogue “W” illustrating more than 1,200 pictures, mottoes, etc., a part as follows: Turner Prints 14, Petty Pictures 51, Grafton Proofs 29, Congress Prints 26, Famous Mottoes 142, Burlington Proofs 24, Religious Pictures 20, Genuine Mezzo Proofs 48, Genuine Mezzo Prints 112, Connoisseur Miniatures 12, and many others. Price, $1.00 per copy. Prepaid, six copies for | 5.00 |
| 25 | Art Nude photographs, size 3½ × 5½, no two alike, for | 2.00 |
| 50 | Art Nude photographs, size 3½ × 5½, no two alike, for | 3.00 |
| 100 | Art Nude and Semi-nude photographs, size 3½ × 5½, for | 5.00 |
| 20 | Bathing Girl Photos, size 3½ × 5½, all different, for | 1.00 |
| 50 | Bathing Girl Photos, size 3½ × 5½, all different, for | 2.25 |
| 100 | Bathing Girl Photos, size 3½ × 5½, all different, for | 4.00 |
| 250 | Bathing Girl Photos, size 3½ × 5½, all different, for | 10.00 |
| 500 | Bathing Girl Photos, size 3½ × 5½, all different, for | 25.00 |
| 12 | Hand Colored, Bathing Girl Photos, size 8 × 10, for | 5.00 |
| 25 | Hand Colored, Bathing Girl Photos, size 8 × 10, for | 10.00 |
| 50 | Hand Colored, Bathing Girl Photos, size 8 × 10, for | 20.00 |
| 100 | Bathing Girl Photos, black and white, size 8 × 10, for | 30.00 |
| 12 | Art Nudes, selected from our leading sellers, or any you may choose from our catalogue in any finish desired, at | 10.00 |
| 25 | Art Nudes, special selection, best sellers, size 11 × 14, mounted (a selection that we are sure will please) | 12.50 |
| 100 | Art Nudes, size 7 × 9, all different, assorted finishes | 50.00 |
| 12 | Movie Star Photographs, size 8 × 10, your choice, at | 6.00 |
| 25 | Movie Star Photographs, size 8 × 10, your choice, at | 12.00 |
| 50 | Movie Star Photographs, size 8 × 10, your choice, at | 24.00 |
| 100 | Movie Star Photographs, size 8 × 10, your choice, at | 35.00 |
| 150 | Movie Star Photographs, size 8 × 10, your choice, at | 50.00 |
| 12 | Movie Star Photographs, size 3½ × 5½, your choice, at | 1.00 |
| 25 | Movie Star Photographs, size 3½ × 5½, your choice, at | 1.50 |
| 50 | Movie Star Photographs, size 3½ × 5½, your choice, at | 2.00 |
| 100 | Movie Star Photographs, size 3½ × 5½, your choice, at | 4.00 |
| 6 | Komic Pictures, 11 × 14, mntd., “Make You Laugh Kind” | 1.00 |
| 12 | Komic Pictures, 11 × 14, mntd., “Make You Laugh Kind” | 1.50 |
| 25 | Komic Pictures, 11 × 14, mntd., “Make You Laugh Kind” | 2.50 |
Art Nudes are shipped by express only. Remit by money order or bank draft. All orders shipped promptly. |
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The American Art Company
Offering the Most Complete Line of Art Subjects in the World
JANESVILLE, WISCONSIN, U. S. A.
Everywhere!
Whiz Bang is on sale at all leading hotels, news stands, on trains, 25 cents single copies, or may be ordered direct from the publisher at 30 cents single copies; two-fifty a year.
