Life, 1883-06-21 · page 5 of 16
Life — June 21, 1883 — page 5: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Analysis of Life Magazine Page 291 **"The Devil" Cartoon:** This depicts a Fair Teacher (identified as "a philosopher of the new school") telling students that the Devil is everywhere, tempting wrongdoing. A student named Sambo then systematically asks if the Devil is in various locations—the schoolroom, classroom bench, his pocket—each time receiving "Yes" as confirmation. The joke's punchline reveals Sambo's actual concern: he's lost his pocket money and sardonically concludes he "ain't got no pocket" since the Devil must have taken it. The satire mocks both new educational philosophies emphasizing moral temptation and the student's practical, self-interested reframing of abstract theology. **Other Content:** Two separate pieces appear below: "How It Was Done" (poetry about weather) and "The Revenge of a Sombre Horse" (prose about an oddly-behaving horse near Brooklyn Bridge).
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
THE DEVIL! Fair Teacher (not a philosopher of the new school): Y TEMPTING Sambo TO DO WRONG. ERYWHAR, Miss ? AMBO, IN DIS YER ROOM ? Sampo; THE DEVIL IS EVERYWHERE, ALWAYS uess I GoT YER DERE, Miss, Cos I AINT GOT NO POCKET. HOW IT WAS DONE. OF the weather we talked and it seemed to her cloudy; From the breakers she feared we were soon to have rain. And the beach at low tide was excessively rowdy, So perhaps it were well to walk homeward again. “ What to me,” said I, seizing her hand, “ is the weather ? What the foam of the sea, what the turn of the tide. Through the breakers of life let us put out together, On the deep of eternity drift side by side?” In my passionate grasp not a finger that fluttered ! With her eyes ever fixed on the storm-brooding main, Only this the sweet, tremulous word that she uttered : “* After all, I believe I shall not mind the rain T. R. SULLIVAN. THE REVENGE OF A SOMBRE HORSE. At high noon yesterday a horse might have been seen moving spasmodically down Chatham Street in front of a bob-tail car. ‘There was an air of witherdness about the horse. He looked mildewed and effete. His long and bulging legs moved with an irregular motion that suggested an internal mechanism of rusty wires, his off eye turned mutely heavenward, and his tail looked as though it had been blasted by a sudden sorrow. The middle of his back worked up and down with every step, accompanied by inverse motion of the head and tail. His near eye was fixed with tender yearning on a small mound of sand that had been left near the track by the builders of the Brooklyn Bridge. The driver was a small man with a battered eye, who wore an abandoned straw hat, and had a rope comicbooks.com