Life, 1883-12-27 · page 11 of 17
Life — December 27, 1883 — page 11: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# "New Year's Day in Mokeville" This cartoon satirizes class pretension and religious hypocrisy in rural America. The sketch depicts three fashionably dressed figures (one wearing a top hat) encountering a humble cabin—"Brer Abe" comments in dialect that "Dan's gettin' to be too much 'ristocratic airs" and references finding four baskets hanging on the door (likely a folk custom or joke about abundance/charity). The accompanying text attacks **Monsignor Catesby-Capon**, an apparent Catholic clergyman character, for selling elite "First Circle" religion to wealthy American women while dismissing scientific progress (Darwin, Huxley, Faraday). The satire suggests he offers wealthy patrons an exclusive heavenly society excluding "common" people and even "martyrs"—religion as social stratification rather than spiritual salvation. The piece mocks both religious authority figures who exploit the wealthy and the vanity of society women susceptible to such appeals.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
NEW YEAR'S DAY IN MOKEVILLE. Brer Abe: “Dan's GETTIN’ TO BE TOO MUCH 'RISTOCRATIC AIRS MONG DE GALS OB DIS YER TOWN, Dat’s ‘BOUT DE FOUF BASKET WE 'SE FOUND HANGIN’ ON DE DO’.” it is fiddle-de-dee, Let us take, for instance, his sublime effort on Revelation, ‘* Science,” says the Monsignor, in a burst of erudition, ‘* will take you to nebule. But there it stops. It carries you back to protoplasm. Butthereit s/ops. It brings you to a knowledge of the action of the forces of nature. But there it stops. It measures the distance of a planet from the sun. But there it STOPS, Why "—here he warms up—‘‘why not cast away such a feeble, incompetent system of thought, and accept that higher science which has no bounds?" True. None of us ever thought of that before. Why not raze our public schools, burn our libraries, hang our professors, draw and quarter every inventor, melt down our presses for church bells, turn our editors into monks, and go back to the dear, delightful middle ages when no- body knew how to spell, but everybody was scientific with that grand, illimitable science of Rome, the science of which Mon- signor CATEsBY-CAPON is so great an expounder ? When the Monsignor settles these large questions with our women by one blow, how vain it would be for our ineffectual male scientists to grapple with him, Already it has been dis- covered that Agazzis, Miller, Faraday and Darwin recanted on their death-beds and died in the Faith, and it is well known that TyNDALL, Huxtey and HOFFMANN have aban- doned their shameful researches, and are boning up on the catechism with a view to becoming Jesuits. This can readily be believed when we know that even some American society women, who have devoted years to the study of protoplasm, box-pleating, nebulz, Easter bonnets, evolution, snubbing and other abstruse sciences, have been profoundly impressed with the Monsignor's scientific discourses. It is not as a scientist, however, that Monsignor CATEsBy- CAPON comes among us, but as the aristocrat. He is no low- flung follower of the Christ of the Lower CLasses, but the sleek, well-fed, abundant apostle of Fixst CrrcLe Evangelism. He wastes no time trying to convert the common herd, but aims solely at us, who have wealth or grandfathers, or both. We are to have a real swell little heaven of our own, not quite so nice as Newport, perhaps, but one that will do better than the dread- fully mixed place into which our own native divines so hopelessly try to coax us. There we will set up our crests and establish our cliques, and draw the line at the piscatorial disciples, snub the martyrs and forget to invite the confessors to our dinners, and have utterly nothing to do with the cringing sets of Seraphim on the other side of Jordan. Meantime, Monsignor CATEsBy-CAPon would have us do just comicbooks.com