A man called for hair restorer at the drug store. The new clerk gave
him something to apply. In the course of time the man returned with a
complaint. He declared the stuff powerful enough for some purpose but not
to grow hair. His head was as bald as ever but he was getting two big
lumps like cocoanuts on the top. The clerk looked at the empty bottle and
turned ghastly pale as he exclaimed “My Gawd, man, I’ve made a terrible
mistake. I gave you bust developer.”
* * * * *
Gosh All Hemlocks!
Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of a bucket of beer;
Up the street and down the line,
I’ve got the bucket; who’s got the dime?
* * * * *
“What’s Sauce for the Goose”
A colored woman and her husband were conversing together when the latter
happened to express curiosity as to the meaning of the word “propaganda”
which he was constantly running across in the newspapers.
“Well,” said his wife, “ah is not sure, but ah thinks ah know what
propaganda is. F’r instance, wif mah fust husband ah had one chile, and
two wif mah second. You’re mah third husband an’ we hain’t got none at
all. Now, I’m the propah goose, but you ain’t the propahganda.”
_Whiz Bang Editorials_
“_The Bull is Mightier Than the Bullet_”
Is the theater becoming immoral? The majority of critics claim it is.
The WHIZ BANG disagrees on this point. We claim the motion picture
development has stopped the sporadic growth of suggestive plays on the
legitimate stage.
The immoral, or at least suggestive plays made their first appearance
in any large number twenty years ago. Witness “Three Weeks,” “Sappho,”
“Du Barry,” and others, and still today you will find these plays in
oblivion. Together with them, the women who starred in such plays are
almost unheard of today. Most prominent among these is Olga Nethersole.
She was an English governess in the ’80’s and startled London with her
portrayals of “The Transgressor,” “Magda” and other productions of like
character.
Twenty years ago Miss Nethersole shocked two continents with her “Sappho
Kiss.” She always maintained that playing the parts of these easy women
would “make” her. Witness her interview of more than five years ago, in
which she is quoted as having said:
“People have not understood that I chose to play prostitutes because I
have felt it my work to aid the world by showing the suffering in it. If
I felt that I had not been chosen for this task I should never have given
my life to it.
“Do you know the story of Alexander Dumas, the younger? He was an
illegitimate son, whose father refused to wed his mother. Thereupon the
son gave up his life to the cause of woman and wrote his plays with the
suffering of woman uppermost. ‘Camille’ will live forever.
“I have felt that if I could show the suffering and the misery that
illicit passion causes I could do something for the world, could point a
way toward removing the evil.”
And today, Olga Nethersole’s prediction has fallen flat. Her name, or
the names of her mimics, no longer are blazoned on the electric signs of
Broadway. Olga Nethersole, and the principle for which she stood, are in
oblivion.
* * * * *
This is the era of keepers, too. Our collective national appetite has
been entrusted to the keeping of four Bills. I refer to Bill Bryan, Billy
Sunday, Bill Anderson of the Antisaloon League and Billy-Be-Damned.
Those of us who once owned thirsts rapidly are becoming reconciled to
the prospect of seeing about every other man in this country established
in the role of his brother’s keeper--not his barkeeper, perish the
thought--but the sort of keeper who keeps his charges locked up in an
iron barred cage and whacks them across the nose with a steel rod of
sumptuary discipline should they manifest a desire once in a while to
indulge in a little personal liberty.
It has become the custom for many police departments to resort to
underhanded methods in obtaining evidence wherewith to bring guilty
persons to trial for certain offences, the plan adopted being the
employment of what is commonly known as “stool pigeons”--go-betweens who
act in direct conjunction with the police. Concerning those who allow
themselves to be so employed there is little to be said other than that
they are not fit for decent society. It is a sneaking way of securing
a living and those who lend themselves to it ought to be ostracized by
citizens who believe in conforming to the ordinary decencies of life.
* * * * *
Moral reformers are altogether too ambitious. They want to abolish vice
but they cannot do it. Vice is not crime, although the two things are
often confounded. The word “vice” literally means a fault or error. A
crime is a deliberate violation of the law of God or man.
Why should we be so serious and so violent in our attitude toward human
vice? The root of the evil is in the weakness or wickedness of human
nature. What is needed is to invigorate humanity with that moral strength
which resists the inroads of vice. There are periods in the history of
every nation when certain forms of vice are particularly flagrant. This
was so when civilized Greece had lost her pristine manliness. It was
so when pagan Rome was near her fall. It was so, unhappily, in England
in the nineties of the last century, which saw the popularity of such
literary and artistic decadents as Oscar Wilde and Aubrey Beardsley.
Wise reformers will not ever deceive themselves by thinking that they
can eradicate vice. They will try to lessen vice by moral suasion and by
removing the economic causes which are the promoters of evil living. To
put wretched people into jail is not the best way to reform them. It is
better to make them see that a life of virtue pays better than a life of
vice. This may be a low utilitarian standard, but it will appeal to those
who are altogether guided by considerations of profit or loss.
* * * * *
The alimentary canal of the business world needs a physic. It’s the same
in business as with the human system, when things get clogged. We’ve been
gorging the system of the business world until its tripe needs scraping.
We’ve kept the hopper too full for a healthy elimination, and we need
calomel and rhubarb for a change. Capital has allowed its cormorant-like
propensities to assume the proportions of a boa constrictor in trying to
swallow not only the calf but the whole herd. Labor, following closely in
the wake of capital and profiting by its example, has pulled the bridle
off of the horse and started it down the road of reason for a head-on
collision with the captain of industry, who is stepping on the tail
of his big Packard, and both will be injured. Cornering the earth and
setting the price of all things required for man’s welfare has come home
to roost in demands for wages double and treble what they used to be, and
both capital and labor must be purged of this overload on the liver of
righteousness or the undertaker will have an unusually thriving business
very soon.
The tendency of present-day writers and authors of fiction stories to
deal in suggestiveness is perhaps explained in the popularity of the
magazines which cater to these outpourings. Gouverneur Morris is one of
these, and who can say that Mr. Morris is not one of the foremost writers
of the day? In his latest masterpiece, “The Wild Goose,” which appeared
recently in Hearst’s, he writes, for instance:
One of the shoulder-straps of her night-gown had slipped so that Diana’s
left breast was almost wholly bare. At her husband’s next words she
hastily pulled the night-gown back into place, as she might have done if
he had stepped suddenly into view.
“I could crawl to you on my hands and knees,” he said, “if I could lay my
head on your breast just one little moment.”
“Frank,” she exclaimed, “I am so sorry! But please, please--this is
no time to discuss what’s been and gone and happened. Do go back to
bed.... Count the sheep going over the hurdle.... Don’t you know I’d do
anything--anything--anything--except the things I can’t do?...”
There was a long silence. Then the man spoke again.
“Do have pity,” he said, “for Christ’s sake!”
* * * * *
Then we have Arthur Somers Roche who quite often reveals much truth
in his fiction. Writing recently in the Cosmopolitan, Roche, perhaps
unconsciously, reveals a time-worn trick of the woman of the street in
“working” a male victim. He writes:
The difficulty with the Waiters’ Union had resulted in the engaging of
girls as waitresses at the Central. An extremely pretty girl had just
served Mr. Dabney with something. Inspiration had come to him as he
started to tip her.
“Worth just fifty cents, m’dear, if I put it in your hand. Worth five
dollars if I put it in your stocking. What say?”
The waitress essayed coyness, but failed in her endeavor. Five dollars
was five dollars. She turned slightly to one side; her skirt was raised;
into her stocking-top Dabney slipped the five-dollar bill.
No invention of modern history has ever been acclaimed with the
enthusiasm that greeted Mr. Dabney’s strikingly original idea. There
was a yell from Mr. Ladd’s table; as explanation shot about the room,
hilarity reached its highest pitch. Immediately a dozen girls stood close
to tables, while unsteady hands that held bills fumbled at the tops of
stockings.
* * * * *
Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
How did your brewing do?
It has the smell, and kicks like hell,
But tastes like rotten glue.
* * * * *