Life, 1886-01-14 · page 4 of 16
Life — January 14, 1886 — page 4: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Analysis of Life Magazine Page 32 The page is titled "By the Way" and contains a collection of brief satirical notes rather than traditional political cartoons. The decorative header shows silhouetted figures in various poses. The items mock contemporary public figures and institutions: Chicago's crematory ambitions, the Pope's charitable donations, a proposed "Home for Weary Women," horsemeat consumption in Paris, Bavarian drinking culture, John L. Sullivan's Hamlet misquote, and French naval matters. Other notes criticize newspaper standards, state legislators named Taylor, and philosophical pretension. The page concludes with a poem mocking W.D. Howells' poetry, suggesting his prose is superior but his verse is weak and prosaic. This represents Life's signature style: bite-sized social and political commentary targeting specific contemporaries through witty observation rather than elaborate visual satire.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
DAIRY NOTE. HICAGO is to have a Crematory. The noble City of the West heard that Boston and New York had Crematories and made up its municipal mind that Chicago should have one, too, if it took all the cream in Illinois. Sen- ator Logan has been asked to preside at the opening ex- | ercises, - * * HE Old Testament revisers have been wrestling with Proverbs for some time, and have come to the con- clusion that “ Where there 's a Will there's a Give-away,” and that “ Many a Micky makes a Mucker.” . . . HE Tribune feels more hurt over the President's char- acterization of newspapers than any other of LIFE’s | contemporaries. The cap evidently fits. . . . HE Ship of State in France is still known as the Grévy Boat . . . WRITER in the Rochester Union speaks of the “permanent President fro ¢em. of the Senate.” We will say for the Unron, however, that it always has made mistakes like this very seldom. HERE are four Taylors in the State Legislature. They represent a great ex-pants of country and have given an impetus to the old joke about rendering unto Scissors what Scissors has a title to. . * . NE of the subjects for discussion at the Concord School of Philosophers last summer was “ What is Sleep ?” It didn’t take the audience long to find out when an LL.D., S.T.D., P.D.Q. got up to orate upon the subject. NOTHER man has been found who did not write the Morey letter. He is almost as populous an individual as the author of the letters of Buntling or the Junius Ball. . . . OME iconoclast asserts that Joan of Arc was not burned. So it goes! The first thing we know the discovery will be made that Washington lied and that Jefferson was n't simple, and then what will become of Tammany Hall. HE Pope has given £20,000 to the Propaganda. All of which goes to show that it pays even ganders to behave themselves. . . . A “HOME FOR WEARY WOMEN” is shortly to be started in New York, but what is really wanted is an Inebriate Asylum for tired men. . . . INCE the siege of Paris the custom of eating horseflesh has become very popular. Sort of Hors d'’auvres, as it were. . . . HE King of Bavaria has taken to drink. Poker players as wel] as others in the Bavarian Realm are alive to the beauties of the King Full. . * . OHN L. SULLIVAN is getting conceited because he read somewhere that Hamlet said : “ There 's a special provi- dence in the fall of a Sparrer.”” . * . VERYONE knows what a true lover's knot is, but no one but he who has loved and lost ever could grasp the full meaning of the untrue lover's wont! . . . | «6 RTHUR RICHMOND " writes an open letter to Secretary Bayard in the January number of the North American Review. It is very open, especially to criticism, in the matter of the decency and good taste both of its writer and the editor of the Review. . . . TO W. D. HOWELLS ON READING HIS POEMS. E think your prose work, Mr. H., Exceedingly poetic, And state the fact without a fear Of being called heretic. But we must say O author of The “ Florentine Mosaic,” You ‘re rather weak in poetry, In fact, you are prosaic. 'T were best, we think, that you should sing Your songs, dear sir, in prose, For then a grand and swelling hymn Your work harmonious flows. But when on Pegasus you ride, You scar him deep with rowels: Your songs degenerate from hymns To most unpleasant Howells! J. K. Bangs. comicbooks.com