Life, 1883-08-30 · page 13 of 16
Life — August 30, 1883 — page 13: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# "Propinquity" - A Satire on Chance and Love The poem, by T.R. Sullivan, satirizes how **random chance (propinquity—proximity) governs marriage decisions** rather than compatibility. The speaker describes four people—Augustus, Alice, Alfred, and Agatha—who pair off by accident and marry hastily. The satire's point: had they encountered *different* people by chance, they'd have married those instead. The poem mocks **Cupid** (the "blind little god of the quiver") for his indiscriminate arrows, suggesting marriages based on circumstantial meetings are destined to fail. The speaker imagines Alfred and Alice marrying instead (if they'd met), or Augustus and Agatha never meeting—implying these random pairings are fundamentally flawed. The crude illustration labeled "**The Ocean Steamer—No. 9**" appears to be a separate cartoon, likely satirizing something about ship travel or seasickness, though its specific meaning is unclear from the image alone. The remaining prose items mock bed bugs, railroad conductor theft, and Russian autocratic censorship—typical satirical targets of the era.
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Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
> LIFE - 107 PROPINQUITY. Avoveres saw Alice one morning By accident, over the way— And, smitten without any warning, Proposed—and they marry to-day. And Alfred and Agatha meeting By accident, quite, at the play, Were caught at the very first greeting, And are to be married to-day. Had Alfred, now, chanced to meet Alice, In just that original way, I'll wager, without any malice, That they would have married to-day. Had Agatha walked for an airing In Alice's shoes, let us say— Augustus might now have been swearing To love and defend her alway. Ah! Blind little god of the quiver, Thy wings ever flutter astray ! ‘To think of thy sport is to shiver ! Thine arrows fly all the wrong way ! For Alfred and Agatha mated No more than a season shall stay. Augustus and Alice are fated To wrangle their wedlock away. Ah! Blind little god, if thy blindness Should lead thee to flutter my way, Uncover thine eyes in all kindness, And kill me in mercy, I pray ! T. R. SuULLivan. THE OCEAN STEAMER —No. 9. Sanpy Hook. “T see," remarked the guest at a seaside hotel, com- ing in from the garden one morning, “that you have some fine specimens of Cimex Lectularius in your beds.” “Land of Scott,” said the landlord, in a beautiful burst of enthusiasm, “I should say so. Aint a place on the coast like this for ’em. Grow spon- taneously, you might say. Can't crush ’em out. Give you some to take home with you if you want.” And then when he foand that the Cimex Lectularius does n’t grow in that kind of a bed, and is a strictly noc- turnal plant, he chased that boarder two days trying to kill him, Great clamor is made at the headquarters of a Western railroad because it has just been discovered that about 70 per cent. of the passenger fares have been stolen by the conductors. ‘The passengers and stockholders are delighted to know that the directors do n't get all the swag. Little do the people who travel care whether the robber is the President of the Com- pany or only the porter of the Pullman, It's all the same to the victim. A WEEK ago the Tsar banished 22 young students for reading a Nihilist paper. We thought at first that the act of the autocrat was inexcusably brutal and harsh, but since learning that the editorials in the paper were written by O’Dynamite Rossa, we endorse the Tsar. A man ought to be sent to Siberia for such a wicked waste of time. comicbooks.com