Life, 1883-04-26 · page 6 of 16
Life — April 26, 1883 — page 6: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Analysis of Life Magazine Page 196 **The Cartoon:** The top illustration mocks the "Academy Exhibition" (likely the National Academy of Design, a prestigious art institution). The caption states this represents "the best our artist could do with the Academy Exhibition to inspire him." The comic panels satirize Academic art as repetitive and uninspired—featuring stick figures, crude drawings, and absurd scenes. This critiques how formal Academy standards supposedly stifled artistic creativity and produced derivative work rather than genuine inspiration. **The Article:** "On the Origin and Nature of Hermits" humorously traces hermits from antiquity to modern times, noting how hermits were originally respected holy figures but became degraded into objects of ridicule. The piece suggests only "hermit thrush" and "hermit crab" retain dignity—a tongue-in-cheek commentary on social decline.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
SOROATAY SHIPPER THIS IS THE BEST OUR ARTIST COULD DO WITH ON THE ORIGIN AND NATURE OF the remote days of antiquity there were to be HERMITS. I N found certain persons so excessively disagreeable that no one could live with them. As these persons generally possessed every virtue but that of tolerance, it was magnanimously voted that if they would consent to live alone their families would agree to guarantee them a reputation of fabulous sanctity. Considering themselves deeply aggrieved, and _re- viling their unappreciative families, these apprentices to holiness deserted their homes, and spitefully selected the coldest, darkest, dampest, and most uncomforta- ble, inconvenient and unhealthy spots, where they her- metically ed themselves in caves {hence the name hermit), while their generous families spread abroad, by means of agents and advertisements, the peculiar piety of their departed relatives. This plan immediately met with great and deserved success, and, families uniting for self-protection, her- mits began to appear in all parts of the earth, and were soon visited by numbers of idle and jocular individu- THE ACADEMY EXHIBITION TO INSPIRE HIM. als, who came solely with a view of making it lively for these lonely persons. But the latter—though possessed of few worldly ac- complishments—were gifted with a rugosity of manner and a force of language which overwhelmed the intru- ders, Stricken with terror, they shielded themselves. behind the most abject adulation of the recluses, art- fully asserting that they had come to worship these godly persons, the fame of whose exceeding holiness and miraculous powers had spread throughout the earth—and making other extravagant statements, dic- tated solely by fear and equally remote from the truth. ‘Thus it will be seen what a pernicious and deleteri- ous effect the order of hermits had on the minds and morals of their contemporaries, while it led to the cul- tivation of the most intolerant and intolerable virtue, and of a total abstinence from cleanliness among them- selves. But the profession, though gratifying to the vanity, was not a lucrative one. The odor of sanctity has gradually faded away, and the only types left to re- mind us of a happy past are the hermit thrush and the hermit crab. ANANIAS. comicbooks.com