Chapter I: Part 1

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

A Trip to the Battlefields

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_Captain Billy’s
Whiz Bang_

_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.”