Quick, Mama, the Handkerchief
The little boy had quite a cold—
The weather it was hot;
I said, “Is that sweat on your lip?”
He said, “No, sir, it’s not.”
Whiz Bang Editorials
“The Bull is Mightier Than the Bullet”
Less than two short years ago the Whiz Bang was founded, upon my return from the army, on the Whiz Bang Farm, hoping in so doing that the veterans and their friends of Robbinsdale and vicinity would be supplied with samples of the pep and ginger we had in the army and navy and marine corps. In our opening number, we expressed a faint hope for “big time” sometime, and that we could follow in the footsteps of the Cherry Sisters of vaudeville.
Our hopes and aspirations have been more than fulfilled. In twenty months, without the aid of advertising or circulation campaigns, and without a single subscription agent in the field, we have grown from 3,500 circulation in October, 1919, to more than 300,000 guaranteed paid circulation with this issue, May, 1921. America surely has given us a grand reception, and we are grateful. Next month we are planning on letting our Canadian neighbors get our bundle of farm filosophy, and as quickly as newsdealers can be communicated with, we will open up new territory.
Here’s thanks to you, folks, one and all. And we want you to consider yourself as associate editors. If you have a story, or a joke, or a question for Captain Billy to answer, or a verse, or prose, or a catchy saying—send it in.
And as a grand finale, so to speak, the Whiz Bang will stay in the fight for the rights of all mankind to enjoy that liberty—the full measure of our personal and national liberty—for which we bucked the bean line in khaki and blue in the recent war. We will stand firmly opposed to any invasion of our inherent rights to the pursuit of happiness, health and prosperity.
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The rôle of the drum is anything but hum-drum. The ear-drum recognizes the sound of a drum whether the instrument is side, snare, brass or kettle. In travel I have seen and heard drums big and little, round, cylindrical, high and low, loud and soft, wild and weird; played by head, hand and foot—played fast and slow in life and death, peace and war—played by savage and by civilized man in the desert or orchestra hall.
Savages, whose natural argument was a blow on the head to beat out their enemies’ brains, naturally fell into a percussion style of music and invented the drum, often the sole as well as the chief musical instrument.
The drum figures in this world from religion to ragtime—from the Salvation Army to the jazz band.
Deborah’s timbrel was a sort of drum. The old tom-tom at an Indian snake-charming doubtless had its counterpart in Egypt in 1600 B. C., and one listens to that same noise in modern Cairo. The dull sound that waked my dreams in the Alhambra was from a drum the Moor had brought from the East after a crusade.
Music is a universal language, and the despised, unmusical drum has a polyglot tongue. All other musical instruments have their speech of sentiment, love and emotion, but the voice of the drum knows the eloquent language of liberty and can get more volunteers for God, home and native land than all the orators. The roll of the drum, like that of the sea, fills the soul’s shore-line and its every bay and gulf. Heine says that the history of the storming of the Bastile cannot be correctly understood until we know how the drumming was done.
The reveille of the drum means that it is time to get up, and there is a fable of its resurrection meaning in the old legend of soldiers, fallen in battle, who by night rose from the grave in the battlefield, and with drummer at their head, marched back to their native home.
There is a pathetic story in French history of Napoleon’s nameless drummer-boy being swept from the ranks, by the sudden dash of an avalanche, into an Alpine valley. He was uninjured and the drum still hung suspended from his neck. He waved his hands to the soldiers 200 feet above him and began to drum, playing the tattoo, the reveille, the advance and the charge. But there was no time to rescue him, the soldiers passed on, and the last thing they heard in the clear, cold air was the beat of a funeral march. Then the little drummer boy lay on the snow bank to die with the snow for his shroud and the falling night for his pall. For years the veterans of the Italian campaign hushed their voices at the campfire, as they told the story of Napoleon’s drummer-boy, whose slender body lay frozen beside his drum in the silent solitudes of the snowy Alps.
In patriotic art we have the spirit of ’76. Germany has used the drum as a favorite means to raise recruits—we have done it against her, and by God’s grace will give her a drum-head court martial before long, though the world is waiting for the time Tennyson speaks of, “When the war-drum throbs no longer.”
The drum is the heart-beat of a liberty-loving humanity. The Fourth of July drum recalls the spirit of 1917, when Uncle Sam started to make the world habitable and we prayed that the American eagle might beat out the brains of Germany’s two-headed vulture; recalls the spirit of the Spanish War to give Cuba and the Philippines human rights; recalls the War of the Rebellion for the union of all creeds, colors and conditions; recalls the war of Mexico for a square deal for Americans; recalls the war of 1812 for free commerce of our ships upon the high seas; recalls the war of 1776 for liberty by the noble colonists.
I believe in the drum. Can you beat it? Hurrah for Uncle Sam, the drum-major of the world in the march for freedom of body, mind and soul, always and everywhere!
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Several persons of our acquaintance have asked why we refer to marriage in the same sentence with war. There is no difference.
A fellow meets a girl and decides that she is the woman he wants to “battle” through life with.
You “present arms” and she “falls in.”
You talk it over and decide on an “engagement.” At the marriage license bureau you “sign up.” A minister “swears you in.”
There are only a few “skirmishes” during the courtship. The real “fighting” starts after marriage. That’s when a man thinks he’s a “Colonel,” and he’s only a nut.
In the house, as well as on the “battlefield,” they use “hand-grenades,” such as flatirons, pots, and rolling pins.
The wife is usually a good “rifler.” She rifles your pockets every night, takes your large money, and “confines you to quarters.”
Whether you have done anything or not, she always has you on the “mess detail.” She makes her “counter attacks” in the department stores, and she knows how to “charge.”
She is your “Commanding Officer,” and you are her “Supply Officer.”
In the game the fiercest fight is always to come. Wait until the “infantry” arrives. Instead of “shouldering arms,” you shoulder the baby. On the battlefields, shells may screech and scream, but they have nothing on the kid. You get your “walking papers” every night. This is the only “hike” you take.
In war, you sign up for four years. There is no such clause as that in your wedding certificate. You can get exemption from war on account of marriage, but you can’t get exempt from marriage on account of war.
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One outraged pulpit orator states that when the average society girl enters the ballroom in these depraved times she has on only four garments, but we take it for granted he didn’t count shoes and stockings in making up his estimate.
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Now one of our most eminent medical scientists announces that hiccoughs may be stopped immediately by placing one’s index finger on the patient’s fifth curvicular nerve and pressing hard, but we must find out definitely where the fifth curvicular nerve is before trying this simple remedy on the next hiccoughing girl friend we happen to be with.
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A little fun occasionally is all right, but life is too short and too serious to spend it all around the monkey cage.
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