Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, Vol. 2. No. 13, October, 1920: America's Magazine of Wit, Humor and FilosophyVarious
General
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, Vol. 2. No. 13, October, 1920: America's Magazine of Wit, Humor and Filosophy
Various
American wit and humor -- Periodicals
“Do you know the story of Alexander Dumas, the younger? He was an
illegitimate son, whose father refused to wed his mother. Thereupon the
son gave up his life to the cause of woman and wrote his plays with the
suffering of woman uppermost. ‘Camille’ will live forever.
“I have felt that if I could show the suffering and the misery that
illicit passion causes I could do something for the world, could point a
way toward removing the evil.”
And today, Olga Nethersole’s prediction has fallen flat. Her name, or
the names of her mimics, no longer are blazoned on the electric signs of
Broadway. Olga Nethersole, and the principle for which she stood, are in
oblivion.
* * * * *
This is the era of keepers, too. Our collective national appetite has
been entrusted to the keeping of four Bills. I refer to Bill Bryan, Billy
Sunday, Bill Anderson of the Antisaloon League and Billy-Be-Damned.
Those of us who once owned thirsts rapidly are becoming reconciled to
the prospect of seeing about every other man in this country established
in the role of his brother’s keeper--not his barkeeper, perish the
thought--but the sort of keeper who keeps his charges locked up in an
iron barred cage and whacks them across the nose with a steel rod of
sumptuary discipline should they manifest a desire once in a while to
indulge in a little personal liberty.
It has become the custom for many police departments to resort to
underhanded methods in obtaining evidence wherewith to bring guilty
persons to trial for certain offences, the plan adopted being the
employment of what is commonly known as “stool pigeons”--go-betweens who
act in direct conjunction with the police. Concerning those who allow
themselves to be so employed there is little to be said other than that
they are not fit for decent society. It is a sneaking way of securing
a living and those who lend themselves to it ought to be ostracized by
citizens who believe in conforming to the ordinary decencies of life.
* * * * *
Moral reformers are altogether too ambitious. They want to abolish vice
but they cannot do it. Vice is not crime, although the two things are
often confounded. The word “vice” literally means a fault or error. A
crime is a deliberate violation of the law of God or man.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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