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Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang, Vol. II. No. 23, August, 1921




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                            _Captain Billy’s
                               Whiz Bang_

                             [Illustration]

                         _America’s Magazine of
                             Wit, Humor and
                               Filosophy_

                    AUGUST, 1921      Vol. II. No. 23

                             Published Monthly
                     W. H. Fawcett, Rural Route No. 2
                         at Robbinsdale, Minnesota

    Entered as second-class matter May 1, 1920, at the postoffice 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




_Drippings From the Fawcett_


A few months ago a newspaper friend of mine in New Orleans wrote about
having taken a drink of the Louisiana brand and then backing against a
bale of cotton as he said: “Come on, boy, let’s go.” I didn’t appreciate
his humor very much at that time because I had been on the wagon for
several months. I had not touched the “fiery flare” that “stealeth away
the mind” principally because the morning after the night before found
me in such condition that it seemed to take months of the “tapering off”
process to get back in shape.

However, the devil got the upper hand again and, as usual, there was the
devil to pay. Somebody presented me with a nice, new-appearing black
bottle bearing a shiny, greenish colored label. The alleged bonded stamp
had a peculiar shade and indicated a bourbon of twelve summers. The
contents, however, bore the taste of a reverse action to an old maid’s
age. But the cayenne pepper, ether and tobasco sauce got in its damnable
work.

Two hours later I passed by the Ashley Airport, located in Robbinsdale
near the Whiz Bang farm. Instead of backing against a bale of cotton, I
backed against a 90 horsepower aeroplane, handed the pilot my last $50
and said: “Come on, Gus, let’s go.” And, believe me, Gus and I went some
before we got off this last “bender.”

The pilot, Homer Cole, veteran of four years’ service in France,
fulfilled his duties in a business-like way, while Gus and myself were
filling ourselves in an unbusiness-like way. Our first stop was Brainerd,
Minn., a hustling city about 150 miles north of Robbinsdale. We had so
much real or fancied fun on our first flight that we enveigled Cole to
make another leap of 22 miles to Breezy Point lodge in the old Indian
territory. Of course in the meantime we had ridded ourselves of our
visible supply of tobasco sauce and both knew that our stay in my Pequot
log cabin resort must be brief. Therefore, the very bright and brilliant
idea soaked in the hired man’s dome, that an airship would be a necessary
permanent adjunct for traveling back and forth between Robbinsdale and
Pequot.

Gus conducted negotiations with Cole and learned that his plane could
be purchased on the installment plan. The deal was soon closed and at
this writing the plane is partly mine. We managed to last it out for
one day in the North pine woods and early next morning hopped off for
Minneapolis, with its fond memories of many mills and motley moonshine.

Later in the day, my brother, Harvey, who now conducts the business end
of the little old Whiz Bang, located Gus and I in a gin mill. He handed
me a nice letter of invitation to attend a convention of the Independent
Magazine Distributors at the Schlitz Hotel at Atlantic City. While the
convention notice sounded mighty good, the name of the hotel suggested a
hankering for the good old days.

Gus was heart-broken, to think that I would leave him behind and as he
had performed valiant service as caretaker of Pedro, our pedigreed bull,
and the cows and chickens during many years as Whiz Bang farm hand, I
granted his plea to accompany me.

We landed safe, sound and, as usual, sick in the McAlpin in New York
City. It was Gus’ longest train ride and incidentally his first visit
to the big village. At the outset he refused to remove his overalls,
rubber collar and red necktie, which was quite embarrassing to me. We had
a swell room on the tenth flight, with carpets on the floor and brass
buttoned fellows to wait on us. We were informed we could get no liquor
in New York unless we were Enright. Gus promptly formed the advance
guard on the Great White Way, or whatever you call it, and soon we were
both in right. After an eye opener or two, my hired man asked the genial
barkeep for the location of the wash-room. He was shown an ante-room
which bore the sign: “Gentlemen.” He walked right in anyway. Nothing in
New York seemed to deter this faithful, simple Minnesota farm-hand.

That night we received a telegram from Robbinsdale cautioning us to make
reservations in the Schlitz Hotel at Atlantic City, as that institution
might be full on account of the convention. Gus read the message to me,
threw it in the waste basket as he nonchalantly remarked: “If the Schlitz
Hotel is full it has nothing on me.”

The next day it was Atlantic City or bust. We arrived in rather good
shape and were assigned a pleasant room overlooking the Atlantic and the
famous boardwalk. I induced Gus to take a bath, although he insisted
he didn’t need one and that anyway it wasn’t the right time of the
month. A little bribe, however, brought him around to his senses and
after his plunge, I handed him a ten dollar bill to go about and enjoy
himself. Before leaving the room he was strictly cautioned to beware of
pickpockets.

Gus returned several hours later and, I am sorry to relate, was a little
the worse for wear. He had a puzzled, sorrowful look on his face. After a
few moments of hesitation he confessed—he had been “touched.” The mystery
of the missing mazuma was cleared later that night when I coaxed him to
take off his socks before crawling into bed. There in the dark recess of
his left light blue stocking was hidden a five and a two dollar bill.
“Gosh, but I forgot all about hiding it,” he exclaimed with a sigh of
relief.

Next day we “dolled up” as pretty as possible so as to be somewhat
presentable at the convention banquet. We had just started to leave the
room when Gus became so grief stricken that I was forced to cancel the
engagement and remain by his bedside. The shock came in the form of a
telegram from Maggie, the hired girl, and read as follows:

    “Pedro took violently ill last night from heart disease—Horse
    Doctor Hawkins unable to diagnose his sickness and Pedro was
    rushed on truck to Minneapolis—Bull specialists in the Midway
    Packing plant say his trouble is homesickness due to Gus’
    absence—All hope given up—What shall we do?”

An hour later, while Gus was still shedding tears and demanding that
we return home at once, we received a second message, this one from my
brother, which read:

    “Pedro died at 6:00 o’clock—Does Gus want his body brought to
    Robbinsdale for burial?—A son was born to the Hereford cow one
    hour after Pedro passed—Have named him Pedro Junior after his
    father, which assures continuation of the Pedro Bullage.”

Pedro’s death and my intermittent headaches rather dampened our spirits
and so we started back for Robbinsdale. Waiting in Chicago for our
connections to Minnesota, and wishing to cheer up Gus and to ease the
pain of Pedro’s death I said to him, “Gus, you have done pretty good on
the trip so I will get you something nice. What do you want?” We were
just passing a bird store and Gus said, “Get me a pet monkey.” So I
bought him a ring tail monk, which he now has at Breezy Point and with
which he spends most of his time after his day’s work.

As this is written I have somewhat overcome the effects of tapering off,
but the memory of this last jamboree has made an everlasting record on
Gus’ snoose dampened mind.

       *       *       *       *       *

Deacon Miller’s son, Pete, has a new racket. It appears that he bought
a golden trombone from some Chicago mail order house, and every night
he entertains the boys and girls of the neighborhood with his melodies.
Everybody likes to see the way Pete is coming to the front and when it
comes to playing fast music, etc., Pete can slide that golden trombone in
and out to beat the band.

       *       *       *       *       *

IN MEMORIAM

Gus and Maggie wish to express their heartfelt thanks for the kind
sympathy and the beautiful flowers attending the recent bereavement of
their beloved Pedro, famed pedigreed bull, to whom we were very much
attached and who died from shortness of breath, superinduced by a severe
case of homesickness, due to the absence of his favored master, Gus,
during Mr. Gus’ recent trip to Broadway. It is our joy and comfort to let
our many friends know that Pedro’s place in our hearts will be partly
filled by his young son, Pedro, Jr.

       *       *       *       *       *

We went to church last Sunday for a change and the minister preached a
sermon about Lot’s wife looking back and turning into a pillar of salt.
We were telling Gus, our hired man, about the sermon, and Gus says he was
walking around Robbinsdale Monday evening and saw the minister strolling
with Deacon Smith’s wife, and when they looked back and saw Gus, both of
them turned into a dark side street.

       *       *       *       *       *

Whiz Bang readers will remember some time ago we got a letter from a
fellow on the Pacific Coast who enquired if his long lost brother from
Sweden was our hired man, Gus. It developed later that this was true and
Gus and his brother, Ole, staged a reunion the other day, but as Gus’
brother is not any too dainty and as he has weak pedals, I was unable to
find a position for him on the Whiz Bang farm. However, Gus solved the
difficulty by getting his brother a job as street cleaner in Robbinsdale,
and after the first day, Ole quit and said that Robbinsdale was too fast
for him. At least that is the impression we got from him, for he said
Robbinsdale was no one horse town.

       *       *       *       *       *

Rus Morrissey says we were in error in declaring that a whiffenpoof was
a fish that swims backwards to keep water out of its eyes, and that a
whiffenpoof really is a dog whose left legs are shorter than its right
legs so that the said whiffenpoof dog can walk around a hill without
losing its balance. Some dorg, we’d say!

       *       *       *       *       *

A Succulent Table d’Hote

    The cow stood in the pasture field,
      Her joy was most complete
    For with her was her baby calf
      A dining tete-a-tete.




_Our Movie Gossip_

BY RICHMOND


The Whiz Bang is hearing all sorts of rumors and gossip wheezes from the
movie camps surrounding the City of Angels, regarding the antics of Clara
Smith Hamon, who recently was freed in the Ardmore, Oklahoma, shooting
case and who is now attempting to break into the picture game with her
“life-story” to teach young girls to beware of oil kings and others.

According to the consensus of whisperings, Clara is having a difficult
time getting studio artists to work for her in the production of the
alleged “reform” photoplay. It is reported she is offering fabulous
salaries from the fund of $10,000 which Jake Hamon is supposed to have
left her, in an endeavor to put over the picture. One camera man said he
was offered $500 a week, and Mason Litson, former Goldwyn director, was
reported to have turned down an offer of $750 a week.

Los Angeles says that besides the Motion Picture Directors’ association
voting to expel any member who aids Clara, the Screen Writers’ Guild has
taken action against the Hamon photoplay. If all this dope is true, Clara
will have a job on her hands illustrating her adventures to young girls
via the screen play. Even after the play is produced, if it ever is,
Clara will find it a task to find theatres to exhibit it in.

Pauline Frederick is now on her way west again from a recent trip to New
York. They say she whispered to a close friend in the depot in New York
as she was leaving, that she and Willard Mack will again wed very soon.

This recalls to mind the gossip that revolved about their previous
engagement when Pauline was playing at the Famous studio in New York City
several years ago. While she and Mack were engaged—he was waiting to get
a divorce from Marjorie Rambeau at the time—it is said he wavered for a
time and showed a decided inclination toward returning to the fair and
beautiful Marjorie. Pauline became so alarmed over losing her playwright
prize that it is said she approached Marjorie.

So Pauline got him, then they separated. Last winter the beautiful
Barbara Castleton, former Goldwyn star, went east, joined one of Willard
Mack’s vaudeville acts, and it was reported was engaged to wed Mack.
They, too, were prevented from carrying out an immediate marriage because
of one of those bothersome final decrees.

Barbara, by the way, while at the Goldwyn studio was one day discovered
in a refined but tempestuous love scene with a tall, raven-haired English
actor. Maybe it was part of a picture, but took place way out on a dark,
deserted stage beneath a huge black cloth used to keep the dust off from
the furniture! An electrician stumbled upon the romantic scene and when
the story was whispered about the studio it is said the poor electrician
was cross questioned and put through the third degree by Hollywood’s best
gossips.

It seems that the English actor has a wife somewhere in the
Empire—Australia or Ireland—so Barbara was daily reported to be
infatuated with some other admirer. It seems her romantic passion for
Mack “took,” for she allowed the press to announce the fact that they
intended to wed when he won his decree from the emotional Pauline,
“Polly” as she is known.

Another interesting angle of the case is to the effect that Pauline never
rode a horse until last winter. One of the Goldwyn pictures required this
feat, so one perfectly handsome cowboy was engaged to teach “Polly” to
ride. The riding lessons were frequent all winter and Hollywood expected
to hear of one of those “high born lady chauffeurs”—in this case cowboy
star—marriages. However, that’s now cold.

       *       *       *       *       *

Our Program

This is a modern society drama in four acts:

Act I. Their eyes meet.

Act II. Their lips meet.

Act III. Their souls meet.

And then what do you suppose meets? Their attorneys.

       *       *       *       *       *

Sign in a laundry window:

    “I want your duds,
      In my suds.”

       *       *       *       *       *

To the Rear, March

Army teamsters are known for their science of cursing. One of the trucks
was deep in the mud and defied all his efforts and curses. A chaplain
passing just then shocked.

“Friend, don’t you know who died for sinners?” he said. The answer was
quick, “Damn your conundrums; can’t you see I’m stuck in the mud?”

Without further questions the chaplain decided to retreat.




_Limber Kicks_


    He sipped the nectar from her lips,
    As neath the moon they sat;
    And wondered if another man
    Had drank a mug like that.

       *       *       *       *       *

    A tool chest was the old hen’s nest,
        I’ll bet you cannot match it;
    She cackled when she tried to set
        Upon a nail and hatchet.

       *       *       *       *       *

      A passing breeze
      Exposed her knees;
    Milady did not care,
      She blushed for fear
      Her naked ear
    Might cause the men to stare.

       *       *       *       *       *

    _Mamma loves papa,_
      _Papa loves wimmin;_
    _Mamma caught papa_
      _In swimmin’ with wimmin._

       *       *       *       *       *

The Romance

    A girl                       A bride
    A man                        A groom
    A perfect moon        A scrap or two
    A bench                    Old stuff
    A sigh                       You say
    A perfect spoon      Alas! Too true.

       *       *       *       *       *

Hard to Explain!

A bit in doubt as to whether her husband had gone to their mountain cabin
with male escorts, friend wife decided to call up and find out. The
following conversation took place:

Husband—Hello! Hello!

Wife—Hello, dear, what are you doing?

Husband—Why, I was just washing out my X, Y, Z’s.

Central on the wire—I’m “wringing” them!

Bang!!!

       *       *       *       *       *

    Mother may I a-riding go?
    Yes, my sweet Lucille
    But give your friend this sound advise,
    Keep one hand on the wheel.

       *       *       *       *       *

    All forms of love, I know tis true
    Are bound to cause a quake or two
    But still I’m betting, the most upsetting
    Is love in a canoe.

       *       *       *       *       *

A girl is getting old when she begins to sigh over the pictures in the
album.

       *       *       *       *       *

Living together when tied with the bonds of matrimony is often a knotty
life.

       *       *       *       *       *

The solid man has no sediment in his makeup.

       *       *       *       *       *

What is home without a cellar?




_Bobbed Hair Genii_


Although the rest of New York can’t seem to see why they are so excited
about it, all the high brow married ladies of Greenwich Village are in a
lather of emotion. Ruth Hale has set ’em free.

Rah for liberty, freedom and Ruth!

Owing to Ruth, the down-trodden girls with bobbed hair and hubbies, no
matter how many times they are married, need not lug around the old man’s
name any longer. No more of this “Mrs.” stuff south of Washington Square.

It seems that the young lady genii who inhabit the Village and have
flights of soul and yearn and yearn, occasionally fall in love and get
married and go to live in apartments with kitchenettes, dumb waiters,
husbands and other furniture. But to their intense indignation, the
butcher and everybody right away begins calling them Mrs. Thingambob,
entirely forgetting the undying fame of the names they used to sign to
their poems. So the girls proceeded to strike.

Fannie Hurst, the lady who says her husband comes to call on her twice
a week, Inez Gillmore, who is married to Will Irwin, and a lot of girls
similarly encumbered, organized the Lucy Stone League, Lucy being a lady
who refused to stand for the outrage way back in 1855. Ruth Hale was one
of the members. She is a writer young lady who married Heywood Broun, the
dramatic critic, and dared anybody to call her Mrs. Broun.

The United States government took the dare. When she wanted to go to
Europe, the State Department got in bad with Greenwich Village by writing
out her passport in the name of “Mrs. Heywood Broun.” She indignantly
refused to accept it, refusing to go to Europe at all and leaving the
place flat.

She has now won what the girls consider to be a tremendous victory for
“The Cause.” Through the courts she has compelled a real estate owner to
deed a certain piece of property to “Heywood Broun and Ruth Hale, his
wife.” The Greenwich Village ladies straightaway celebrated the event by
adopting a new constitution for the Lucy Stone League—which is one way of
giving a cheer, not to say a yell of triumph.

If it’s all right with Ruth, it’s all right with me, but it is certainly
going to make complications. You will have to keep dragging the host of
the party off to one side and keep demanding in a hoarse whisper, “Say,
before this goes any further, is this Jane somebody’s wife?”

There’s also another terrible affair in the Village. Every bobbed hair
is on end with excitement over what happened to “Grace” of the famous
“Grace’s Garret.” This is one of the places in the Village where they get
together and tell each other how the jealous magazine editors have turned
down their work through spite.

Grace Godwin—of course, she has a husband named Sperry, but that doesn’t
count—runs the place, she says, more as a harbor for lonely souls than as
a depot for eats. Well, the other day, five or six lonely souls happened
in for a dish of tea; but all the said lonely souls were inhabiting black
bodies. Grace called the lightest colored one aside and told him how it
was. Of course, the Village is awfully democratic and all that but—well,
he ought to be able to see for himself—with so many of the other lonely
souls being hot-headed Southerners and all. How was she to know that the
colored brother was a famous sociologist with a Yale degree and that
the rest of the party were all university high brows. They brought law
suits against her and got a verdict for $600, which is more money than
the Village ever heard of at one time before. Grace of “Grace’s Garret”
has given the Village solemn warning that if any more dark tinged lonely
souls come along she is going to close “The Garret” and move out of the
Village.

But if it comes to that, everybody else is moving out of the Village
anyhow. So many purse-proud outsiders have invaded New York’s Latin
Quarter that the rents are murder in the first degree. The real Villagers
are moving out to Brooklyn—than which there could be no worse fate for a
Villager.

Ziegfield Follies girls tell me that all the time the police were
supposed to be searching for Nicky Arnstein, the alleged bond robber,
Nicky was in his wife’s dressing room. He is married to Fannie Brice of
the Follies and used to come to the show every night disguised as her
colored maid.

Now that we are on the topic, a burning piece of information should
be hurried out to the waiting world. Ziegfield says that hereafter he
is going to have all the chorus men in the show sing from behind the
scenes. Nobody wants to see them anyhow. Hereafter, they just represent
noise—like a drum.

A little movie girl of my acquaintance has recently joined the Follies
and what she sees behind the scenes at the Famous beauty show fills her
with awe for the human appetite.

“To tell you the truth,” she says, “Those girls don’t care much about
millionaires. They infinitely prefer to go around with chauffeurs because
they don’t have to worry about which fork to eat with. They have to have
millionaires around on account of their appetites. No ordinary fortune
could keep those girls filled up. In a previous existence most of them
must have been boa constrictors. They eat all the time. One girl, famous
for her beauty, starts in with a good dinner before the show. All during
the intervals when she is not on the stage, she has waiters bring her
lunches in her dressing room. Her bill averages forty dollars a week for
the little snacks she eats between her dinner before the show and the
supper with a millionaire after the show. That girl ought to marry a
Service of Supply Depot.”

The little newcomer says that nearly all the lovely beauties whom we
have imagined as dining on lark’s tongues and poetry have appetites like
traffic cops.

What they need in New York right now is a new country for the movie
stars to be born in. They have a dreadful time trying to get Pola Negri
located. Ever since the foreign pictures began to pour in with this Negri
lady in the leading part of most of the plays, they have been trying to
get her born in some inoffensive place. The press agents have had her in
turn an Italian, a Swiss, an Austrian and a Roumanian. As a matter of
fact the lady’s real name is Paulette Schwartz. I can’t possibly imagine
what her nationality can be!

Similarly worried, the film magnates have finally decided that Josef
Schildkraut is part Turkish and part Roumanian.

Well, never mind, they are both great artists. Two of the greatest Europe
has ever sent us.

Oddly enough, Pola Negri has reconciled the rival film producers to the
horrors of censorship. Only a few weeks ago, they were appealing to high
heaven to be saved from the monster. Now it has occurred to them that
censorship is the only protection the American film industry has against
being swept to destruction by cheap but beautiful German pictures.

The competition is almost murderous. “Passion,” the super film in which
Negri first appeared in America and which would have cost at least half
a million dollars in the United States, was made for $22,000 in Berlin.
Pola Negri gets a salary whose bigness has made Germany open its eyes;
in our money it would be only $45 a week. Of course, there could be but
one outcome to competition like that. Nearly all the German pictures and
particularly all those of Pola Negri are decidedly “rough” in spots. They
are very much bedroom, etc. The American censors may save the situation
by cutting the gizzards out of them. A big Italian picture recently
arrived in New York wherein the extra people were paid four cents a day.
It was a very beautiful and very fine picture. There’s no denying it.
Only the censors can save the movies.

That long suffering and modest soul, Evelyn Nesbit, has finally retired
from the stage after some years spent in a vain attempt to startle the
world with her “message” to young girls. She has opened a novelty store
in the “roaring fifties” in New York City and will manage it in person.

       *       *       *       *       *

Sweet Essence of Prune Juice

_From “Rainbow,” a Novel_

He kissed her with his soft enveloping kisses and she responded to them
completely; her mind, her soul gone out.

Darkness cleaving to darkness, she hung close to him, pressed herself
into the soft flow of his kiss, pressed herself down, down to the source,
and core of his kiss, herself covered and enveloped in the warm, fecund
flow of his kiss that traveled over her, flowed over the last fiber of
her, so they were one stream, one dark fecundity and she clung at the
core of him with lips holding open the very bottomest source of her.

       *       *       *       *       *

Drummers, Front and Center, March!

The Sunday School teacher had been telling her class about the benefits
of being good. At the end of her discourse, she turned to a bright-eyed
little miss and asked:

“Where do good little girls go when they die?”

“To heaven,” was the prompt reply.

“And where do the bad girls go?”

“To the depot to see the traveling men come in.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Justification

    _“Brass shines with use; good garments would be worn;_
    _Houses not dwelt in, are in dust forlorn._
    _Beauty not exercised, with age is spent—_
    _Nor one or two men are sufficient!”—Marlowe._

       *       *       *       *       *

Starting the Day Right

A pretty stenographer had been transferred by the firm to another city.
The first morning after the change had been made, she came into her new
office, hung her hat and coat on the rack and meandered leisurely to the
boss’ desk.

“Well,” she said, “I suppose you start in the day here the same as we do
in Blanktown?”

“Why, yes, I suppose so,” replied the boss.

“Well, come on, then, kiss me so I can start working.”




_Questions and Answers_


=_Dear Captain_=—Why is it that people say I remind them of a river?—=_T.
Bone._=

Perhaps it is because your mouth is bigger than your head.

       *       *       *       *       *

=_Dear Skipper_=—What is meant by a triumvirate?—=_Bob O. Link._=

Agnes, Mabel and Becky.

       *       *       *       *       *

=_Dear Cap_=—I have often wondered where all the jokes came from.—=_Al
Fresco._=

I don’t know, where were you born?

       *       *       *       *       *

=_Dear Bill_=—My feet are always cold. Do you know anything I could do
for them?—=_Jean Ology._=

Did you ever try shining your shoes with stove polish?

       *       *       *       *       *

=_Dear Captain_=—I found a pair of ice tongs in my parlor. What shall I
do?—=_Art I. Choke._=

Demand a reduction in your ice bill.

       *       *       *       *       *

=_Dear Cap. Bill_=—Judging from your last letters to me your fountain pen
must leak all of the time. Why not get a new one?—=_Maggie Zeen._=

No, you are mistaken. It leaks only when I’ve got ink in it.

       *       *       *       *       *

=_Dear Cap_=—Can you give me an example of the height of
curiosity?—=_Otto Mattick._=

A woman sticking her finger into a bowl of soup to see if it leaves a
dent.

       *       *       *       *       *

=_My Dear Captain_=—I admire you very much and wish to tell you that I am
a neat, nifty and nice little girl. All of my hats are from Paris, though
I must confess my stockings were all made in America. Would you like to
see Paris?—=_Chloro Form._=

No, I’m patriotic. I’d rather see America first.

       *       *       *       *       *

=_Dear Cap_=—How come that your hired man, Gus, is a born
musician?—=_Simon Konshush._=

Because he has drums in his ears.

       *       *       *       *       *

=_Dear Capt. Billy_=—How can I impress upon my sweetheart that I am
really in love with her?—=_Jim Crowe._=

While talking to her, heave your chest up and down like the men in the
movies.

       *       *       *       *       *

=_Dear Capt. Billy_=—Lately I have been keeping company with a delightful
girl. Unfortunately, however, she is inclined to wear her skirts too
short. Could you advise me how I can get her to lengthen them without
offending her?—=_I. Hoofit._=

Hoofit, old dear, you should learn to be diplomatic. The best way to
accomplish the result is to say something like this, “Sweetheart, your
eyes are simply dazzling, but no one will ever notice them, unless you
lengthen your skirts.”

       *       *       *       *       *

=_Dear Skipper_=—What is meant by “Mind your P’s and Q’s?”—=_Dear Dairy
Maid._=

Probably means “Mind your pints and quarts.”

       *       *       *       *       *

=_Dear Capt. Billy_=—I have just been married and would like your advice
on how long I should cook spaghetti.—=_Mrs. Dis N. Terry._=

Spaghetti should not be cooked too long. About ten inches is right.

       *       *       *       *       *

=_Dear Skipper Bill_=—A land-lubber friend of mine recently joined
the Navy and has been assigned to my ship. Could you please suggest a
practical joke to play on him during his first trip at sea?—=_Jack Tarr._=

Bet him a dollar he’ll come in the next roll.

       *       *       *       *       *

=_Dear Captain Billy_=—I visited a nice little girl the other evening
and she would not let me kiss her. Instead, she insisted on kissing a
perfumed Persian kitten she held in her lap. What would you advise me to
do?—=_Bashful Bert._=

On your next visit, select a dark and dismal night and at the
psychological time meow like a cat. Maybe she won’t know the difference.

       *       *       *       *       *

=_Dear Captain Billy_=—I am a young married man. There is a handsome
married woman, the wife of a traveling man, across the hall. She has a
phonograph and each evening when he is away she plays such records as:
“Lonesome,” “I Know That You Are Married,” “Won’t You Come Over to My
House,” “Won’t You Come Over and Play?” Do you think I should take a
chance?—=_Phical Phil._=

You are hereby referred to the poem “Johnny and Frankie,” which appears
in the Smokehouse section of this issue.

       *       *       *       *       *

=_Dear Captain_=—What large stream flows from North to South?—=_D. Jennie
Rate._=

Hootch, my dear.

       *       *       *       *       *

=_Dear Capt. Billy_=—When I sing I get tears in my eyes. What can I do
for this?

Stuff cotton in your ears.




_Our Monthly Drammer_


“_YOU HOLD MY WIFE_”

A Comedy On “Behold My Wife”

BY JAMES STARR

There is in “You Hold My Wife,” which George Selford has screened from
Sir Filbert Barker’s “The Translation of a Shimmy Dancer,” the sort of
romance that appeals to all the primitive story-loving instincts of the
widely known human race. A bum of an Englishman seeking a fortune in
the Judson Bay country hears from home that his fiancee has not married
another man as he had hoped she would. He is led to believe his own
family had deliberately planned to go against his plans. To be even
with them he drinks a pint of likker, marries an Indian girl, Lali, the
daughter of old Fry-on-the-moon, and ships her to England as his wife.
The good sports of the English family, dismayed and shocked, take the
savage in hand and, of course, turn her out a raving beauty in two reels.
So that when the bum English chap, stricken finally by remorse and put on
his feet by a two-gallon can of likker, returns to England to recover
his squaw, he finds her a social sensation of the season and the mother
of a fine little son. He tells her that it is not his son, she faints, he
cries to the servant, who is handy, “You Hold My Wife,” the servant does.
The English chap leaves the house and joins a circus.

       *       *       *       *       *

“_MIDSUMMER BADNESS_”

A Comedy On “Midsummer Madness”

There are a few directors of pictures you can not depend upon for the
sane, sensible and spirited productions. Billie The Mille is one, no
longer just Sesil’s brother, but one who calls himself a director, no one
knows why, but he does. Billy’s latest is a photographic essay, a world
beater, a sensation, but it is unbelievable. The Mille has woven a real
bum story, telling it by captions and not by pictures, such as all good
directors do some time in their life, we all make mistakes, and Billy has
just started at the beginning of his long list. No one knows just why
this picture was made, but it doesn’t make any difference to the restless
public, they will stand for anything and Billy knows it. He is a wise
guy. In the story there is the new idea of the neglectful husband and a
guy that likes this guy’s wife, the neglectful husband likes the other
guy’s wife. They should swap each other’s wife and let it go at that,
but Billy wouldn’t have it that way, so he made them love each other for
awhile and then he tore them apart. The master of this picture put in a
subtitle reading “The End” and let the public go home for the evening to
start a drama of their own.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Sydney Bulletin tells a fairly good story about family foibles. Here
it is:

The thud-thud of swiftly moving feet gave me warning as I was about
to turn the corner, and I drew back to avoid a collision. An agitated
figure, his breath coming in sobs, whirled past me and leaped on to a
car that was leaving the car-stop; and almost at the same moment another
shape shot around the corner and fell upon me. He released me at once
and apologized profusely. Gazing furiously at the car, now fading in
the distance, he explained the situation. “That man’s wife,” he said
bitterly, “ran away from him and came to be my housekeeper, and just now,
when I got home, I found him trying to make love to her. The dirty cur.”

       *       *       *       *       *

    _The clock struck nine, I looked at her,_
    _Her lips were rosy red;_
    _“At quarter after nine, I mean_
    _To steal a kiss,” I said._
    _She cast a roguish glance at me,_
    _And then she whispered low_
    _With quite her sweetest little smile,_
    _“The clock’s like you—it’s slow.”_




_Whiz Bang Editorials_

“_The Bull is Mightier Than the Bullet._”


Audrey Munson, the darling of the studios, is telling the poor but
patient public what gorgeous parties some of the artists have pulled off,
and speaks breathlessly of champagne baths and rose-covered stairways.
It is nothing new, Audrey; the ancients, in the matter of luxury and
license, could knock any of the present day sports for a row of Chinese
pagodas.

I have recently been engaged in reading two very interesting histories,
the one of the rose, the other of the perfumes, in reading which I
was deeply impressed with the fact that all the civilizations of the
past, previous to their downfall, had their rose fetes, their festivals
of flowers, their perfumed halls and extravagant balls and soirees.
Before the fall of the Roman empire; the wealthy abandoned themselves
to pleasure, luxury and licentiousness and such expressions as “living
in the midst of roses” and “sleeping on a bed of roses” had a deep and
tragic meaning. Seneca speaks of Smyndiride, who could not sleep if
one of the rose petals with which his bed was spread, happened to be
curled. Cicero alludes to the then prevailing custom among the Romans
of reclining at the table on couches covered with roses. Ah, my jeweled
buddies there were Adonises in those days!

When Cleopatra, the perfumed serpent of the Nile, went into Cilicia to
meet Mark Antony, she gave him for several successive days a festival
such as the gods themselves would not blush to participate in. She had
placed in the banqueting hall twelve couches large enough to hold three
guests. Purple tapestry interwoven with gold covered the walls, golden
vases admirably executed and enriched with precious stones, stood on a
magnificent gold floor. On the fourth day the queen caused the floor of
the hall to be covered with roses to the depth of eighteen inches. These
flowers were retained in a very fine net to allow the guests to walk over
them.

Nero, the fiddler of burning Rome and the tyrant par excellence of his
day, gave a fete on the gulf of Baiae when inns were established on the
banks and ladies of noble blood played hostesses to the occasion, the
roses alone costing more than four million of sesterces, or $100,000.

Before her downfall Rome could spend millions on her royal tables,
support the dignity of a single senator at $80,000 a year, employ courts
for sycophants and flatterers, impose taxes at the pleasure of her ruler,
declare any complaint treason, marry her daughters for money and titles,
employ notaries to attest the fatness of her banquet fowls, punish men
with death for trivial offenses and make slaves and menials of the
profoundest philosophers.

Considering their natural limitations, those old boys set a pace that
would keep anybody hustling to keep up with them. The sports of several
generations back might have been veritable hicks compared to the modern
brand, but those of several centuries back didn’t take a back seat for
none—and don’t yet!

       *       *       *       *       *

In the May issue of last year, when Whiz Bang was a baby in the magazine
field, we published a poem famed over the West Coast, “The Girl in
the Blue Velvet Band,” which we obtained after much effort from a
former convict of San Quentin penitentiary, wherein this masterpiece
was written. Within a week after the Whiz Bang, containing the first
publication of this poem, reached San Francisco, that city had sold out
every copy, and a day or two later none could be purchased from Canada to
Mexico on the western slope. The Whiz Bang mail box was full every day
with requests for more copies of the issue containing “The Blue Velvet
Band.”

Consequently, we republished the poem in our October issue, which we also
called our first Annual. The big rush of the May issue was repeated in
October, and from that time on we have been flooded with requests for
copies of the poem. One enthusiast offered us a ten spot if we’d have
Gus, the hired man, copy the poem from our personal files for him.

This year we are making the Winter Annual a separate book, with four
times as much reading matter. “The Blue Velvet Band,” the verse of the
dope layout, the burglar and the inner walls of San Quentin. “Lasca,” the
tale of the stampede, “The Face on the Bar-room Floor,” and “Johnnie and
Frankie,” are some of the poems scheduled for the “Pedigreed Follies of
1921-22” in October.

       *       *       *       *       *

Probably a Boxing Match

She (just back from Paris): “I can’t go to this dance tonight, my trunks
haven’t arrived.”

He: “Good Lord, what kind of a dance do you think this is going to be?”

       *       *       *       *       *

If you interfere between man and wife, remember this, that they will be
friends again and you won’t.




_Smokehouse Poetry_


_In the September issue Smokehouse Poetry will feature The Unwritten Law
by Budd McKillips, author of After the Raid, which scored such a recent
success in the Whiz Bang, and Angela Morgan’s poem, Betrayed._

    _Bad, hopelessly bad!_
    _I yielded to love that sways mankind,_
    _Not the mere measure of bodily pleasure,_
    _But love that wakes in the soul and mind,_
    _Born of the spirit at God’s behest;_
    _And I bartered all I had,_
    _I, with the warmth of a child at my breast—_
        _Am bad, hopelessly bad!_

_That is the start of Miss Morgan’s plea for the woman who falls and
brings to memory the biblical words, “Let him who is without sin cast
the first stone.” There will be several other red-blooded gems in the
smokehouse poetry section next month._

       *       *       *       *       *

The Far East

    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.”
    Her little skirt was baggy,
    Only reaches to her knees,
    Her hair is black and greasy
    And it is full of bugs and fleas,
    Her teeth are black with betel nut,
    Or colored with dark red paint,
    Her name is Donna Marie,
    The same as her patron saint.
    When the rain fills up the rice fields,
    And soaks us exiles to the skin
    We all go down to “Bino Mary’s”
    And tank up on square faced gin,
    With her arms around my shoulders,
    And her cheeks to mine pressed close,
    And I smell her breath, Oh! Glory,
    I have to hold my nose.
    But I’ve left it all behind me,
    Thank God, I’m far away,
    Back here in God’s own country,
    And you bet your boots, I’ll stay,
    And I’m learning in my old home town
    That folks are wise who say,
    When you hear that “Far East” calling
    Just be wise and stay away.
    No more have I of the “Dhoby”
    Or the awful prickly heat,
    But I walk out in the evening,
    With a maiden fair and sweet.
    Just give me one good Yankee girl,
    Looking like my own,
    And the goo-goo girls are welcome,
    To the “gink” that wrote this poem.

       *       *       *       *       *

Woman

    Oh, woman, woman, woman;
    You are something more than human!
    Ever changing, ever charming
    And sometimes quite alarming.
    And though you break our banks,
    We can only speak our thanks;
    With forms so fair and hearts so true
    We live and die for you, for you!

       *       *       *       *       *

Frankie and Johnnie Blues

_EDITOR’S NOTE: The following stanzas are part of the song: “Frankie and
Johnnie Blues.” The poem is too long to be published in the regular issue
of the Whiz Bang, but it will be reproduced IN FULL in the Winter Annual
of Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang, Pedigreed Follies of 1921-1922._

    Frankie went down to the corner,
    To buy herself some near beer,
    Says to the handsome bartender,
    Has my loving man been here?
    =He is my man=
        =But he is doing me wrong.=
    I ain’t going to tell you no story,
    Ain’t going to tell you no lies,
    Johnnie left here an hour ago
    With a party called Nellie Bly,
    =He is your husband,=
        =But he is doing you wrong.=
    Frankie went back to the Bly house,
    Didn’t go back there for fun,
    Underneath her red kimona,
    She carried a 44 gun.
    =She’s after the man=
        =That was doing her wrong.=
    Frankie knocked on the door,
    Frankie pushed on the bell,
    Open that door you “crooked girl”
    Or I’ll blow you clear to—well,
    =You’ve got my man,=
        =That’s doing me wrong.=
    Thirteen girls dressed in mourning,
    Thirteen men dressed in black,
    They all went out to the cemetery,
    But only twelve of the men came back,
    =They left her man,=
        =That had done her wrong.=

       *       *       *       *       *

    There was a young lady of Skye,
    With a shape like a capital I.
    She said “It’s too bad!
    But then I can pad”—
    Which shows you figures can lie.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Lure of the Tropics

    You’ve decided to come to the tropics,
    Heard all that you had to do
    Was sit in the shade of a cocoanut glade
    While dollars rolled in to you.

    You got that stuff down at the bureau;
    You’ve got your statistics straight?
    Well, hear what it did to another kid
    Before you decide your fate.

    You don’t go down with a sharp hard fall,
    You just sort of shuffle along
    And lighten your load of the moral code
    Till you don’t know right from the wrong.

    I started in to be honest,
    With everything on the square,
    But a man can’t fool with the golden rule
    In a crowd that wont play fair.

    ’Twas a case of riding a crooked race,
    Or being an “also ran”;
    My only hope was to sneak and dope
    The horse of the other man.

    I pulled a deal in Guayaquil,
    In an Inca silver mine;
    And before they found ’twas salted ground,
    I was safe in the Argentine.

    Where I made short weight on the River Platte;
    I was running a freighter there.
    And I cracked a crib on a rich estate,
    Without even turning a hair.

    But the thing that’ll double bar my soul,
    When it flaps at heaven’s doors,
    Was peddling booze to the Santa Cruz
    And Winchester forty-fours.

    Made unafraid by my hellish aid,
    The drink crazed brutes came down
    And left a blazing, quivering mass
    Of a flourishing border town.

    I then took charge of a smuggler’s barge,
    Down the coast from Yucatan!
    But she went to hell off Cristobal
    One night in a hurricane.

    I got to shore on a broken oar,
    In the filthy shrieking dark,
    While the other two of the good ship’s crew
    Were converted into shark.

    From a sunbaked cliff, I flagged a skiff,
    With a salt soaked pair of jeans,
    Then worked my way for I couldn’t pay
    On a fruiter to New Orleans.

    It’s kind of a habit, the tropics—
    It gets you worse than rum;
    You get away and you swear you’ll stay,
    But they call and back you come.

    Six short months went by before
    I was back there on the job
    Running a war in Salvador.
    With a barefoot black face mob.

    A mob that made me general,
    Leading a “grand” revolt,
    And my only friend from start to end
    Was a punishing army colt.

    I might have become their president,
    A prosperous man of means,
    But a gunboat came and spoiled my game
    With a hundred and ten marines.

    So I awoke from my dream dead broke,
    And drifted from bad to worse,
    And sank as low as a man can go,
    Who walks with an empty purse.

    But stars they say appear by day
    When you are down in the deep dark pit;
    My lucky star found me that way
    When I was about to quit.

    Alone on a hot flea ridden cot,
    I was down with the yellow jack
    Alone in the bush and dammed near dead—
    She found me and brought me back.

    In her eyes shone lights of empires gone,
    For her’s was the blood of kings—
    When she spoke her voice inspired high thoughts,
    And dreams of nobler things.

    We were spliced in a Yankee meeting house
    In the land of your Uncle Sam,
    And I drew my pay from the U. S. A.
    For I worked on the Gatun dam.

    Then the devil sent his right hand man,
    I might have suspected he would,
    And he took her life with a long, thin knife;
    Because—she was pure and good.

    Within me died hope, honor, pride.
    And all but a primitive will
    To hound him down on his blood red trail
    And find, and kill and kill!

    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 years quest
    And I left him there with an empty stare
    And a knife stuck in his chest.

    You see those marks upon my arm?
    You wonder what they mean?
    Those marks were left by fingers deft
    Of my trained nurse, Miss Morphine.

    You say that habit’s worse than rum.
    It’s possible too you are right.
    But at least it drives away the things
    That come and stare at night.

    There’s a homestead down in an old Maine town
    And the lilacs ’round the gate,
    And the night winds whisper it might have been
    But the truth has come too late.

    For whenever you play, whatever the way,
    For stakes that are large or small,
    The claw of the tropics gathers it in,
    And the dealer gets it all.

       *       *       *       *       *

Oh, Happy Existence

    The tom cat walketh on the fence
      And calleth to his mate;
    Oh, would that he would hie him hence
    When he has got a date.
    He cometh when my eyelids close,
    To keep his moonlit tryst,
      And rouses me from my sweet repose,
        To pray that he’ll desist
    ’Tis true the tom cat grieves me sore
    When he doth prowl around;
        But would that I, like he, got more
        Of those long evenings out.

       *       *       *       *       *

Beware, Girls

    Lovers are the most devoted where they least expect to wed.
    All they seek is cruel conquest, and when hearts are made to yield,
    They forsake the broken fortress and besiege another field.
    They are like the crafty serpent coiled beneath the fairest flower,
    Till the butterfly or the hum-bird falls within its deadly power.




_Our Rumor Department_

_By Our Los Angeles Correspondent_


An enthusiastic reader sends us an epistle of inquiry. We cannot say that
it is from “Paul” to the Corinthians, because, though the correspondent
signs “Paul,” our noble John Henry reads “Whiz Bang.”

Paul wants to know whether or not it is a fact that there is anything
to the rumor that Owen Moore, former husband of Mary Pickford, is due
to marry Mildred Harris, late wife of Charlie Chaplin? So far as Whiz
Bang knows, neither Owen nor Mildred have any wild desires to become as
one. Mildred scarcely seems of a type that would appeal to the silent
youngster whom Mary released at Minden. Speaking of Minden? Where is that
place? Oh, yes, up in Nevada. Wasn’t it Nevada which was going to show
the Fairbanks and Pickfords that such sudden splitting of the wedded
bonds couldn’t be pulled off in that sanctified state? And didn’t Whiz
Bang tip you off that Nevada was long on talk and short on official
action.

Yes, indeedy. Doug Fairbanks puts on the old carpet slippers and Mary
smoothes his hair for all the world like an old married couple and no
one to say them nay, not even Nevada.

The “rumor” which friend Paul sent to us reminds us forcibly again that
you can hear anything about any one in the picture world or connected
with it. Stick around the Alexandria hotel lobby for ten minutes and the
pedigree of every male and female whose face appears upon the screen will
be peddled to you ad libitum.

Three years ago the Alexandria hotel lobby was the scene of gigantic
picture operations—in the mind. It was customary for ten million dollar
organizations to be formed every five minutes. That was in the days of
the magic rug. It seemed no one could step on the rug in front of the
hotel counter without becoming stricken. New studios by the thousands
were built every night between six-thirty and seven o’clock.

But they don’t have the rug at the Alex any more. Remember when Charlie
Chaplin tried to lick his wife’s manager and tripped from the rug onto a
scantling, his priceless feet exuding themselves skyward? Since Charlie
slipped and fell, the rug has been removed. The reason perhaps is that
few hotels get a chance to brag of Charlie Chaplin staging a fight
in their lobby and the Alexandria evidently trusts that if a return
engagement occurs Chaplin will not be able to complain of slippery
underfooting.

Charlie looks better than in ages. He’s leading the very quiet life, and
working hard.

Reverting again to rumors. Take ’em all and all, most of the picture
“support” on the various lots is comprised of persons who would find it
pretty rough going financially if called upon to exercise brains. And
they are petty.

Small town gossips of a mean nature, jealousies and back bitings prevail.
This doesn’t always hold to the extras alone. Some of the stars are
just as bad. Harold Lloyd pays considerable attention to Bebe Daniels.
The result is that the jealous girls have it in for Harold and Bebe. It
happens that Lloyd is a very decent young fellow, so far as reputation
goes and many a doting mamma gets ideas in her head when she sees the
young millionaire roll down the street in one of his splendid cars. Up
to date there has been nothing brought against Lloyd, even by jealous
ladies who crave and don’t get his attention. He steers clear of the jazz
bunch—as clear as can be done and remain at all popular.

Mildred Davis, for the past two years his leading lady, is frequently
seen in the company of Lloyd at the fashionable gathering places. The
girl is a beautiful looking young creature, possibly 18 or 19 years of
age and naturally those who watch the picture hurdy-gurdy wonder whether
Lloyd is stronger for Mildred than for Bebe. Either young lady, so far as
appearances are concerned, would go a lot further and not meet up with a
more promising gentleman, though marriage may be furthest from the mind
of the trio. These youngsters work hard and have to attend pretty much to
business.

The wild parties still prevail though they are getting a little more
exclusive. People are chosen who don’t have a reputation for bringing up
reminders the next morning of everything that happened. This is a good
idea. Every girl who got drunk the night before discovered before noon
next day that everyone on the lot had heard about it.

In our references to Hollywood and Los Angeles society, we don’t wish to
be accused of laying everything to the picture people. Far from it. The
high society bunch sets a faster pace if anything. One of the wildest
orgies ever attempted in this hextic community occurred recently in the
vicinity of Elizabeth Lake, a distance of some 80 miles from Los Angeles.

It seems that the sacred inner circles of fashion and pictures found
that the ground was being trampled upon too much by the plebeian element
and that the ensuing gossip often ended unpleasantly. Over canyon and
mountains many of the guests were carried by aeroplanes. This item will
be news to some who think they are on the “inside” of the jazz doings
around Los Angeles. The ultra ultras are putting it on stronger than
ever—but far away from home, husbands and wives.

Big men of the pictures and high social standings, who never bat an
eye at certain queens of the amusement world when at work, joined in
a carnival of revelry that surpassed most anything provided for jaded
appetites hereabouts—not excepting the nude bathing parties for which
Hollywood and Pasadena became famous with introduction of private bathing
plunges, out of doors.

Outside the Sodom and Gemorrah cottage, big powerful aeroplanes waited
to carry back to Los Angeles those who find that an air trip to be very
clarifying after a night of social carnage. One man, it is reported,
though brewed up like a boiled owl, landed his two passengers safely on
one of the landing places near Hollywood. There is first-hand information
that brewed up airplane drivers have operated in the vicinity. To date
the motor bike cops have found the pave too hot for them to pinch any one.

       *       *       *       *       *

A bribe in time saves nine.




_Pasture Pot Pourri_


_A baldheaded man likes to tell about the hair-breadth escapes he’s had._

       *       *       *       *       *

A shortened skirt maketh many a flirt.

       *       *       *       *       *

If ignorance is bliss—then why be otherwise?

       *       *       *       *       *

In the race “Back to Nature,” the Bathing Suit is a close second. The
Evening Gown leading by a fraction of an inch.

       *       *       *       *       *

    If a body find a bottle comin’ thru the rye,
    Don’t it make a body sore to find the bottle dry?

       *       *       *       *       *

Flattery is like cologne; to be smelled but not swallowed.

       *       *       *       *       *

When you’re down in the mouth, remember Jonah. He came out all right.

       *       *       *       *       *

It’s the little things that worry us. We can dodge an elephant, but not a
flea.

       *       *       *       *       *

_Variety is the spice of—Salt Lake City._

       *       *       *       *       *

All the world loves a lover, except hubby.

       *       *       *       *       *

As Kipling Remarks

    You will take your fun where you find it
    But you’ll find while you’re taking your fun
    The more you mix with the many
    The less you will care for the one.

       *       *       *       *       *

Resurrected

“A little bit goes a long ways,” said the goose, as she pushed the pebble
over the precipice. “That remains to be seen,” said the pup as he wagged
his tail and walked away.

       *       *       *       *       *

A Clean Joke, Let’s Hope

    _May I hold your Palm, Olive?_
    _Not on your Life, Buoy._

       *       *       *       *       *

Oh, frivolity, thy name is woman.

       *       *       *       *       *

What was the cause of that scar you have on your head?

A woman told me that her husband was in St. Louis.

       *       *       *       *       *

“This hotel is a book of life,” chortled the blonde and boastful
desk clerk, “with me the hero thrilling its pages, and you poor bell
hops—merely the pages.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Sign In Basement Window

Coffee and a roll downstairs, 10 cents.

       *       *       *       *       *

My Evening Prayer

    _Now I lay me down to sleep,_
    _Behold, around me bed-bugs creep._

       *       *       *       *       *

Harrowed husband to barber: Please don’t use that sweet smelling soap on
my face.

Barber: Why not, sir; it has a delicate lasting scent.

Harrowed husband: That’s just it; my wife won’t believe it.

       *       *       *       *       *

    I’VE HAD A LOT OF JOYS ON EARTH;
    I DON’T WANT TO BE A HOG.
    REINCARNATED—I WANT TO BE
    A BATHING BEAUTY’S DOG.

       *       *       *       *       *

Don’t swell up when someone takes you for a ride. You might be used as
ballast.

       *       *       *       *       *

A skinny girl in an evening dress, shows more backbone than a man.

       *       *       *       *       *

You can string beans and kid gloves, but you can’t bull frogs.

       *       *       *       *       *

Help! Help!

    He never had tended to children,
      Yet he said that he wouldn’t mind
    When his wife went away, if she would not
      Leave the babies behind.

       *       *       *       *       *

“_There goes a man who can’t bear children._”

       *       *       *       *       *

Mother Goose Revamped

    I once knew a girl
    Who wore a little curl
    Right in the middle of her forehead
    And when she was good
    She was very, very good
    But when she was bad
    She was very INTERESTING.

       *       *       *       *       *

First we abolish what we consider an evil, opines the Town Tankard, and
afterward secretly embrace it.

       *       *       *       *       *

Mary’s Little (?) Lamb

    Mary had a pretty limb,
    She realized the fact—
    That’s why she wore her dresses short
    She showed a lot of tact.

       *       *       *       *       *

_No, Dia, Anna Lyzer is not a twin sister of Para Lyzer._

       *       *       *       *       *

We are surely tickled to death that Good Friday does not fall on Easter
Sunday.

       *       *       *       *       *

Notice!

_Miss Featrice Bairfax who conducts the lovelorn department of this great
military journal of uplift, will advise you on your matrimonial and love
affairs. Write to her freely; she has been in France long enough not to
be shocked._

       *       *       *       *       *

——What’ll it be, Gents, a lollypop or a nut sundae?

       *       *       *       *       *

Try This On Your Hic-trola

    The old oaken hic bar rail; the brass hic bound bar rail;
    The foam hic spattered bar rail that hic hung by the bar;
    Hic—

       *       *       *       *       *

Our Monthly Maxim

_Late in bed, early to rise, makes dark rings beneath the eyes._

       *       *       *       *       *

Now that Luther Reed has written a villainless play, the husband must be
guilty of a bum cellar or something like that.

       *       *       *       *       *

A New Version

_Here’s to the short skirt and the street car steps. May they never meet._

       *       *       *       *       *

The old fashioned woman who used to take her troubles to the Lord, has a
daughter who now takes them to a lawyer.

       *       *       *       *       *

If at first some men don’t succeed they fail, and fail again.

       *       *       *       *       *

A fat man has another advantage over his thin brethren—he knows exactly
where his cigar ashes are going to land.

       *       *       *       *       *

Moonology

The wife of a man named Moon presented him with a fine boy. This was a
new moon. The father celebrated the event by drinking himself full of
hootch. This was a full moon. When he awoke from his stupor all he had
left in his pocket was twenty-five cents. This was the last quarter. His
mother-in-law took this and rapped him over the head with a club. This
was the total eclipse.

       *       *       *       *       *

Impossible

It can’t be done.

What?

Shave the hair off a gnat’s back with a monkey wrench.

       *       *       *       *       *

Sunburned

    The sun was hot upon the beach
      Her suit was little sister’s.
    She thought she had a good time, but
      All is not bliss that blisters.

       *       *       *       *       *

Ah Ha! Ah!

He—I suppose it would be quite improper for me to kiss you on such a
short acquaintance.

She—Yes, but it’s quite early in the evening yet.




_Classified Ads_


How Come?

(From Cedar Rapids Gazette)

Found—Lady’s lingerie and stockings with auto cushion in pasture on Oak
Blvd., two miles south Vernon road near the Morgan farm called “Buenos
Aires.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Need a Steno?

(Tucson, Ariz., Star)

Competent stenographer without local references excepting polkadot
reputation, wants job. Masons and Christians need not answer. Phone
1009-M.

       *       *       *       *       *

No Restrictions

For Rent—8-room house. Family of 6 or 7 wild children. Mrs. Minnie
Zenft.—From Oelwein (Ia.) Register.

       *       *       *       *       *

Take Your Turn, Boys

(From Times Herald, Dallas, Tex.)

A lady presser, experienced preferred. Brannon’s Cleaning Co.

       *       *       *       *       *

Here’s Another

(From Kansas City Star)

LAUNDRY HELP—Girl to operate bosom press. The Bachelor’s Laundry Co.,
2004 Broadway.

       *       *       *       *       *

Now a Man!

(From San Francisco Examiner)

Man for pressing forms; no experience necessary; good pay while learning.
541 Market st.

       *       *       *       *       *

An Old-Timer

A Cambridge under-graduate, contrary to regulations, was entertaining his
sister, when they heard someone on the stairs. Hastily hiding his sister
behind a curtain, he went to the door and confronted an aged man who was
revisiting the scenes of his youth, and was desirous of seeing his old
rooms.

Obtaining permission, he looked around, and remarked, “Ah, yes, the same
old room.” Going to the window, he said, “The same old view”; and peeping
behind the curtain, he exclaimed, “The same old game!”

“My sister, sir,” said the student.

“Oh, yes,” said the visitor, “the same old story!”—Tit-Bits.

       *       *       *       *       *

But, My Dear—

Florine: I won’t marry a man who won’t look me straight in the eye while
he is talking to me.

Chlorine: Then wear ’em longer, dearie.

       *       *       *       *       *

Girls no longer love to dance. They dance to love.

       *       *       *       *       *

The old fashioned girl used to stay home when she had nothing to wear.

       *       *       *       *       *

The feminine half of the world may not know how the masculine half lives,
but it never tires of trying to find out.

       *       *       *       *       *

The Luck of the Irish

An Irishman at confession noticed that the priest had a watch on a fob.
As it was easy he nicked it. Continuing his confession he said, “And
Father, I stole a gold watch and fob from a man, but I will give it to
you.” The priest was horrified by the suggestion and said, “No, you
must give it to the man you took it from.” Pat replied, “But, Father, I
offered it to him and he would not take it.” Then, said the priest, “You
may keep it.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Love As An Appetizer

Any emotion that gives pleasure acts healthily on the heart and other
organs, certain scientists have recently discovered. Brisk circulation,
gnawing appetite and health ensue. Love, hope and happiness all produce
these emotions and, contrary to the accepted notion, the ardent lover
ought to enjoy his meals thoroughly. Despair, grief and fear are declared
to have quite the opposite effect. They make the heart slower, and
enfeeble the nervous system, often upsetting digestion.

       *       *       *       *       *

Many a girl looks sweet on the outside, but so does a sugar-coated pill.

       *       *       *       *       *

You may have more brains than a dog, but the dog is the happiest.

       *       *       *       *       *

Could Explain Readily

An enthusiastic temperance proponent was lecturing vigorously on his pet
theme when someone in the audience asked him how he could account for the
miracle of the turning of the water into wine. “That,” he piped up in all
seriousness, “was the one act performed by the Founder of the Christian
religion which He ever after regretted.”

       *       *       *       *       *

“My tear! Isn’t he brilliant!” “It’s the goods, Maurice, just so
brilliant like a glass diamint.”

       *       *       *       *       *

The Other View

Mrs. Justso—“Is my gown cut too low in the back? I can just feel that
those men behind us are staring at me.”

Mr. Husband—“Aw, turn around and show ’em your face and they’ll quit
staring.”

       *       *       *       *       *

No Use

    No use lovin’
    Ain’t no gain;
    No use eatin’,
    Just a pain;
    No use kissin’,
    He’ll go tell;
    No use nothin’,
    Oh Hell!

       *       *       *       *       *

The Only Rings You Gave Me

(By Jack Gould)

    You promised me a lot of things
    When first I fell for you,—
    You said you would buy me diamond rings,
    And pearls of lustrous hue;
    You said that I’d wear silken hose
    And other garments fine;
    Oh, boy—I’m here to tell you these.—
    You had a flow’ry line

Refrain:

    The only rings you gave me
    Were the rings beneath my eyes;
    From vanity you have saved me,
    By adorning me with lies.
    The only pearls were tear drops
    That were shed when I got wise;
    The only rings you gave me
    Were the rings beneath my eyes!
    The fairy tales that you have told
    Would shame the ones of Grimm;
    You made me think that all was gold
    That glittered in the glim.
    But there is bound to come a day,—
    Just wait, old scout, and see,—
    When you’ll find out you’ll have to pay
    For what you got from me!

       *       *       *       *       *

She Was All Ready

Jack (ready for the party)—Dorothy, the taxi will be here any minute.
Slip on your evening gown quick.

Wifie—Now, don’t be funny, Jack, it’s on.

       *       *       *       *       *

Most Assuredly

“Where shall I find ladies’ waists?”

“Between the neckwear and the hosiery, madam.”




_Our Rural Mail Box_


=_Will Wright_=—Certainly not, Will; the Rev. “Golightly” Morrill writes
only of things he has seen—not his personal experiences.

       *       *       *       *       *

=_Rev. Numm_=—We have mislaid our best recipe, but whatever you use,
don’t forget the raisins.

       *       *       *       *       *

=_Della K. Tessen_=—No, Della, he was no gentleman.

       *       *       *       *       *

=_Lew Dikrus_=—When Gus was that way he shaved his head and burned his
clothes.

       *       *       *       *       *

=_Cora Gate_=—Slap his face the next time.

       *       *       *       *       *

=_Iva Byte_=—Yes, all men are like that.

       *       *       *       *       *

=_Gracey_=—No, Gracey, I don’t walk in my sleep. I take carfare to bed
with me.

       *       *       *       *       *

A NATIONAL BIRD IS THE EAGLE—WITH THE STORK A CLOSE SECOND.

       *       *       *       *       *

Essence of Joy, By Gum

By L. J. Messenger

    Please kiss me, dear, the youth insisted,
    As ’round her waist, his arms he twisted.
    I will, says she, if you’ll agree
    To buy some chewing gum for me.
    So the youth was wise and bought the gum,
    And told his dearie he wanted one.
    All right, he heard her softly sigh,
    The gum for me you’ll ne’er deny.
    Now this is a thing I’ve never done,
    Kisses, my dear, I always shun,
    But I know I’ll like them as well as you,
    If they’re as good as the gum I chew.
    So she sat right down upon a chair,
    She chewed her gum and fussed her hair,
    And the nearer she came to the “bargained fun”
    The faster she chewed her chewing gum.
    Suddenly she chewed with all her might,
    And placed her arms around him tight,
    She swallowed her gum, and cried, “Don’t miss.
    I love my gum, but oh, djer kiss.”

       *       *       *       *       *

His First Offense

In New York City, all those who are sent to jail for thirty days are
required to take a bath. A bath attendant upon noticing that Ike
Kabibble’s person was none too clean, suddenly exclaimed:

“Hey, there, you guy! Did you ever take a bath before?”

“Vell,” Abe replied, “I nefer vas arrested before.”

       *       *       *       *       *

    She said to him beneath the tree,
    “Well, I’ll love you if you love me.”
    The kiss he gave with love did burn,
    She gave him ditto in return.




_Arthur Neale’s Page_


    _I joined a Frisco schooner—a good ship, I was told;_
    _Bound for Sydney, New South Wales, with lumber in the hold._
    _We’d left the South behind, boys; began to feel the swell,_
    _When the mate looked in the fo’c’sle. I said: “Mister, go away.”_

       *       *       *       *       *

Fascinated by the spell of the Smokehouse Poetry, and having sailed the
seven seas and visited most every place East and West of Suez, including
Hoboken, N. J., we wished to show the doubting Gus that we also could
string together that line of verse. Hence the above. When we got to the
fourth line, however, we grew tired and finished it up.

       *       *       *       *       *

Gus writes us that he went to St. Paul the other day. He met a girl and
they went into a movie. He says she sat there with her arm around his
waist, and after she’d said good-bye he found it had been in his pocket
as well.

       *       *       *       *       *

’Tis better to have loved and lost when you read of some of the mean
things they say in the divorce court.

       *       *       *       *       *

    “Now while you were at college, my son,
    Tell me of some of the things you done.
    I hope you kept off the cards and vice?”
    “Certainly, father; I only played dice.”
    “And you didn’t go to the races each day?”
    “We bet right in school. They were so far away.”
    “You don’t smoke cigarettes? I said it’s not right.”
    “No. What I smoke, dad, are cigars and a pipe.”
    “You didn’t go round with boys who were tough?”
    “I went with the girls. But I never was rough.”
    “You didn’t sneak out and do drinking by stealth?”
    “Oh, nothing like that. I made it myself.”
    “You mean to say you’ve taken a nip?”
    “Sure. If you want a drink there’s some on my hip.”
    “You never went to a midnight revue?”
    “No. I went with the chorus when they were through.”
    “I hope you didn’t get fighting, my son?”
    “No one would try it. I carried a gun.”
    “I suppose in all sport you took a delight?”
    “Yes. I used to like dancing without any light.”
    “Of course you took part in the baseball game?”
    “I didn’t like baseball. It’s rather too tame.”
    “You didn’t go help your club try and win?”
    “No. I’d much rather help a girl try and swim.”
    “And how much learning, my boy, can you show?”
    “I’ve forgotten more than you’ll ever know.”
    “I’m glad to see that my son is a man.”
    “Yes. I can do more than you ever can.”
    “My boy, I see you’re a lad of my heart.”
    “All right—make it Paris. When do we start?”

       *       *       *       *       *

The Sphere Feminine

    They talk about a woman’s sphere
    As though it had a limit;
    There’s not a place in earth or heaven,
    There’s not a task to mankind given;
    There’s not a blessing or a woe,
    There’s not a whispered yes or no;
    There’s not a life, there’s not a birth,
    That has a feather’s weight of worth—
    Without some woman in it!

       *       *       *       *       *

Certainty

    Is it you I love, dear?
        I can scarcely tell,
    When you smile, your eyes, dear,
        Make me think of Nell.
    When you’re sad, your mouth, dear,
        Makes me think of Sue,
    But, dearest, when I kiss you
        I am surely sure it’s you.




_Our Winter Annual_


In addition to republication of gems of earlier issues of Captain Billy’s
Whiz Bang, the first complete Winter Annual of this great family journal
will contain a large variety of brand new jokes, jests, jingled, pot
pourri, stories, and smokehouse poetry. This book, Pedigreed Follies of
1921-22, will contain four times as much reading matter as the regular
issue of the Whiz Bang and will sell for one dollar per copy. It will be
a book which will be cherished by the readers for years to come, and will
contain the greatest collection of red-blooded poetry yet put in print.
Included in the list will be:

    Johnnie and Frankie, The Face on the Bar-room Floor, The
    Shooting of Dan McGrew, The Harpy, Lasca (in full), The Girl
    in the Blue Velvet Band, Langdon Smith’s “Evolution,” Advice
    to Men, Advice to Women, Our Own Fairy Queen, Stunning Percy
    LaDue, Parody on Kipling’s “The Ladies,” Toledo Slim.

Advance orders are now being received and will be mailed in the order in
which they are received. Tear off the attached blank and mail to us today
with your check, money order or stamps.

    Whiz Bang,
    Robbinsdale, Minnesota.

    Gentlemen:

    Enclosed is check, money order or stamps for $1.00 for which
    please send me the Winter Annual of Captain Billy’s Whiz Bang,
    “Pedigreed Follies of 1921-22.”

    Name..............................................

    Address...........................................




[Illustration: Breezy Point Lodge _at Pequot_

“_Queen Summer Resort of the Northern Pines of Minnesota_”]

_Whiz Bang Bill Announces The Opening of the Queen Summer Resort of the
Northern Pines of Minnesota_

The new summer home of Pedro, Marigold, Gus the hired man, and Ye Editor
has been established among the big pines of northern Minnesota, on the
sandy shore of Big Pelican Lake, and invites the summer vacationists
to come and enjoy life in the open. Twenty new log cabins completely
furnished for housekeeping, electric lights, running water, large cabin
club house, bathing, canoeing, motor boating, fishing, trap shooting,
wild game hunting in season, dancing, tennis and aerial sports. Breezy
Point Aeroplane makes regular passenger flights from the Twin Cities to
this oasis in the northern forest. Located 160 miles north of Minneapolis
over the Jefferson Highway and the Minnesota Scenic Highway.

For further information write to

W. H. FAWCETT, _Owner_

Pequot or Robbinsdale, Minn.




_Everywhere!_


_Whiz Bang_ is on sale at all leading hotels, news stands, 25 cents
single copies; on trains 30 cents, or may be ordered direct from the
publisher at 25 cents single copies; two-fifty a year.

[Illustration]