Life — May 17, 1883 — page 5: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

css” RRREN SINS Aan gnuahtnine He (to his fiancée) : He: Wuat! She (with enthusiasm) : He: SuGar. Ou! IN CHINA? [She breaks the engagement.] I say, JULIA, OLD GIRL, HAVE YOU EVER NOTICED THIS? She (who hates to have people talk to her when she is reading) : Nor SEEN THIS SWEET THING IN CHINA. Wuart Is IT? No. OUR POETRY. HE bulk of our mail is poetry. Biff, the office boy, brings it in, nine bagsful at a time. He then sorts it. Bliff is chain lightning on sorting poetry —is Bliff. There are six large crates ranged around Bliff’s seat. One is labelled “Spring,” another “Love,” another “Obituary,” two more “My Baby Brother” and “ Moonlight.” The last, which is larger, glares in red letters with “Can't Say.” Biff never makes a mistake. A spring poem never goes into the baby box. Love melodies and obituary insanities are invariably sorted rightly. Ravings upon moon- light are never put in the “Can’t Say” crate. ‘That is devoted solely to such lyrics as impress Bliff with the idea the author himself didn’t know what he was writing about. Bliff then “averages” them. He mixes up the contents of each box with a broomstick. Then he ” yanks up the office cat by the tail, and lowers her into the box until she can just reach the envelopes. Whichever poem she claws up is accepted as the lucky one to go before the Editor of Politics and Poetry, who is bald-headed, and doesn’t like to read much. Bliff caught this idea from seeing raffles drawn at Coney Island. He knows that his own se- lection would not be so impartial as that of the cat. He is right. Six poems being fished out by this process, Bliff and the cat skirmish for something to eat and then the boy carts away the unlucky verses and sells them to the waste-paper man for sixty-five cents a crate, and in- vests the proceeds in sandwiches, blue cravats and cigarettes. By-and-bye, he says, he will buy the cat a brass collar with his name on to it. ENGLAND, on seeing O’Donovan Rossa’s boat: “Now comes the tug of war.” comicbooks.com