Life, 1883-04-19 · page 3 of 16
Life — April 19, 1883 — page 3: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# "Statenislander Jinks's Method" This satirical piece mocks a character named Statenislander Jinks, depicted in the accompanying illustration as a disheveled man in a chair. The text argues that Jinks represents a particular type of human nature—someone driven by "Must" rather than rational thought or genuine need. The satire critiques wealthy individuals who occupy themselves with frivolous pursuits and social climbing despite having no practical need to do so. The broader commentary discusses how the rich engage in meaningless occupations and wasteful behaviors, contrasting sharply with working-class struggles. The piece uses Jinks as an example of how human motivation operates on impulse and social convention rather than logic, suggesting that even educated or wealthy people can act without genuine purpose.
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VOL. I. APRIL 19, 1883. NO. 16. 1155 Broapway, NEw York. Published every Thursday, $5 a year in advance, postage free. Single copies, 10 cents. Ga" Subscribers who do not receive their copies will please nolify the office at once. . STATENISLANDER JINKS’S METHOD. RAY of mouse-col- ored light fell upon the stained glass window athwart \ Statenislander gy Jinks, as he sat-pic- turesquely in a lux- urious chair, There were appearances about the young man, each slightly defined, perhaps, but in their aggre- Pi gation _ persuasive, te which indicated that he was thinking. Inheritor of a stupendous in- come, why, it may be asked, should he have engaged in an irksome process that well might be relegated to the poor? Fool !* Let us consider. What is the instigation of a man? I mean, to do anything. 1 also mean, when he is rich. Why does he? Let me propound to you: In the ab- sence of doing, what shall he? Here looms up the imperative clement of Must. The idea, unformulated, had occurred to Jinks. Goethe says: “As voluntary cognizant inanition, if arrival at it could be effected, would constitute the most terrible of conditions, so an approach to it, which Various minds require various food. My wife has a cousin who edits copy for a morning newspaper. On the conclusion of his labors each night he relaxes his mind with the calculus. I have known him to soothe the most flagrantly irritable condition of temper by prosecuting that work for a short time backwards. Well, he is not a fool. It is a conclusion from com- parison. Jinks never soothed himself with the calcu- lus, either progressively or reversely. ‘Therefore, my wife’s cousin is what I have negatively stated him to be, Now. What is the matter with the rich? Why do they go about engaging themselves with occupations? Why do rectors of undoubted millions with feverish haste put armies of words together to do battle for the Mag- nificat, and to intercept the poor in the pursuit of ease ? What is the explanation of Aldine and Early Rose ? Supposing that Nicoll, the tailor, is rich, what does he still make trousers for? Ah, it is human to yearn to do. I have said that Jinks was not like my wife’s cousin. But the same evidences were observable in him. He was not worked by conscious logic ; but he was oper- ated by dull intuition. As he sat bisected by the mouse-colored ray of light, he was affording exhibition of the operation of the universal non-resistible_princi- ple of Do. His canary bird; his. blackbird of a vicious temperament and with the faculty of dislocat- ing a human finger-joint at a blow ; his eighteen hair- brushes, nine with ivory backs ; his érifotres, silver- plated trousers-holders, Kioto-awara vases, nail-polish- ers, pomatum jugs and Chelsea tiles—all the large, beautiful mixed collection with which he had suround- ed himself were ignored. Well. Some people find relaxation in knocking other peo- ple out. I mean rich people. ‘Nero knocked out his mother, which was a villainy of such magnitude that it stands, perhaps, isolated in history. It was a com- mon pastime for the muscular rich to knock out Lon- i is all whereof human nature is capable, is more pro- don watchmen in the time of the Georges.. German at lific than, perhaps, anything else, of psychal pain, students are still in the habit of knocking out available and the application of philosophy has proved that the persons with their house keys, which are a foot and a r, further we remain removed from it, up to acertain half long, and which they casry suspended from their and not always easily recognizable point, the happier, trouser straps. In New York to-day this species of = other things being equal, we are." [Elaboration of the relaxation is not usual. No unemployed aristocrat, thought contained in the Persian maxim—“ Sweat be- under influence of the conviction that “‘ Arbeit macht fore you eat.” Also: “ Arbeit macht das Leben siiss." das Leben siiss,” tackles one of the Finest. The odds 5 —WNorth German Reader.] are too vast, It is not the sweetness of the life eternal Pr = that is courted under constraint of the principle here rt *Applied to the reader. expounded. And no one thinks of banging any one comicbooks.com