Life, 1883-12-20 · page 5 of 24
Life — December 20, 1883 — page 5: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Analysis of "Merited Rebuke" Page from Life Magazine This page contains two pieces of social satire targeting upper-class leisure activities of the early 20th century. The top cartoon, "Merited Rebuke," mocks amateur opera singers. An inexperienced soprano performs while her wealthy father (implied by the second amateur's comment about his "trillions") attends. The joke is that incompetent singers rely on family money and status rather than actual talent. The poem "Only a Cousin" (Mt. Desert style) satirizes summer leisure culture among the wealthy—boating, poetry reading, and idle walks. The speaker defends these trivial pursuits as harmless, acknowledging they're socially meaningless ("a cousin doesn't count!!"). This appears to mock the self-aware shallowness of the leisure class at exclusive coastal resorts like Mt. Desert. Both pieces target genteel upper-class pretensions and empty social pursuits.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
MERITED REBUKE. 1st Amateur (after a Soprano tornado): “THANK GOODNESS! ISN'T SHE?” 2nd Amateur; “You iiot! THat’'s jusT ALL you KNOW TRILLIONS |” “ONLY A COUSIN.” (MT. DESERT STYLE.) YY ESmit's charming—not alarming— To be out with him, by moonlight, on the splendid silver bay. Nor can I see that it’s harming, to be one with him in swarming To the early morning service of Mt. Desert’s Sabbath day— ‘That there follows this some “Rocking” doesn't seem so very shocking, When it’s stamped by custom's fiat as the true Bar Harbor way. Nor when pic-nic-wards we're flocking, need one talk—d /a blue stocking, : All the time in cold abstractions, if here's something else to say. Even Tennis has no menace, With its tiresome crowd, before whom one must make believe to play. For the net is there between you, fix'd to part, and not to screen you, That's over! REGULAR SCREECH OWL ABOUT IT, WHY HER FATHER'S WORTH And the silly herd of watchers never, never go a-vay. Is there anything for rueing, in a summer's day’s canoeing, Or in reading from a poet, on an island, in the bay ? And what is there, just in walking, or a little harmless larking Through the gorge, or over Newport, quite d dewx, as one may say? Well, at least it's not misleading, for us only to be feeding With the flies, alone at Rodick’s, when the rest have gone away. And it's clear there’s naught in Duck-brook, which should seem to make the luck look As if only our one couple could succeed to go astray. But, however all these things be, there's no after-thought that stings me, When I feel how very trivial they must needs be in amount. For, though reckoned by the dozen, if it’s “only with a cousin,"” Why—it’s well known that a cousin—well, a cousin doesn't count I! comicbooks.com