Life, 1884-03-27 · page 3 of 16
Life — March 27, 1884 — page 3: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Page 171 Analysis **The Cartoon "An Extraordinary Case"** depicts a domestic scene where a man with a dog sits opposite a woman at a desk, apparently during a serious conversation. The dialogue reveals the joke: she demands he quit smoking for one year, promising he'll never touch tobacco again. His response—that he didn't smoke for fifteen years, then started at age fifteen and enjoyed it—undermines her ultimatum with absurdist logic. The satire targets naive moral persuasion and the futility of addiction-cessation demands. The "extraordinary case" is the man's contradictory reasoning, not his smoking habit. Below are unrelated pieces: a poem about thrift by Arnold Van Stavoord and commentary on departing foreign guest Matthew Arnold, the famous Victorian critic.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
AN EXTRAORDINARY CASE. She: “ONLY GIVE UP SMOKING FOR ONE YEAR, AND I HAVE NO DOUBT THAT YOU WILL NEVER TOUCH TOBACCO AGAIN.” He; “Wet, I pon’r KNow, I DID NOT SMOKE ONCE FOR FIFTEEN YEARS, AND THEN I BEGAN AND ENJOYED IT HUGELY.” She: “FOR FIFTEEN YEARS! YOU MUST HAVE BEEN VERY YOUNG WHEN YOU BEGAN.” He: “I Was FIFTEEN.” SMILE FORTUNE! A younc lady who attempts to capture more than “Geld ist rund und rollt weg.” seven beaus, always tries to fascinate. There now! HEINE. LL f thrift 1 abj ee ee ag ee eee. | THE RETURN OF MR. ARNOLD. The world, the flesh or the devil lures, woe . . And though Poverty lurks like a goblin grim, UR distinguished foreign guest, Mr. Matthew I'll stint and save some other day, Arnold, has left us. We have treated him as For money is round and rolls away. well as we knew how, and it is no fault of his friends The clinking coin gathers rust and mold here if the Philistine, that hobgoblin of a poet’s When hoarded by itching palms ; dreams, pats himself self-complacently on the breast, Blue eyes are brighter than discs of gold, as before, and Emerson sits as serenely on his throne And I girdle the glad earth in my arms. asever. In his forthcoming book Mr. Arnold may ifloveris: brainer pa wal aay propitiate the rash judgments, delivered on the lecture mi me platform, of our literary idols by dilating on the merits In the spheres above let my spirit roam, of the American cocktail and the urbanity of news- Where there ’s nothing to win or lose; paper reporters. We await the book with great inter- ‘While fave in the world 1 gm never atiheme, | est. The day may yet come when it shall be asked, Whos ne hip comes tn all debts T°ll py, ‘ “Who reads an English book ?” But just now we are For money is rouna and rolls away. eager to read any book that strips off our masks and Farotp VAN SanTVoorD. reveals us as we are in the searching light of criticism, comicbooks.com