Life, 1886-03-11 · page 10 of 16
Life — March 11, 1886 — page 10: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Life Magazine's Self-Satirical Office Tour This is a self-promotional piece where *Life* magazine satirizes its own success by giving a mock-architectural tour of its offices. The humor targets the magazine's competitors who boast about new buildings. The labeled diagram shows absurdist facilities: a "Crematory for Rejected MSS" (burned manuscripts), a "Gallows for the man who hangs around the office," and an "Asylum for Subscribers to Punch" (their rival magazine, housed in padded cells). There's a "Cemetery for Tardy Subscribers" filled with those who died from melancholia after failing to renew. The joke operates on multiple levels: mocking both competitors' bragging and *Life's* own pretension; poking fun at subscription troubles; and making dark humor about a rival publication (Punch). The text notes four headstones memorialize Presbyterian Deacons who "laughed themselves to death" over *Life's* pages—combining self-congratulation with irreverent religious mockery typical of 19th-century satirical magazines.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Prate I, AN EXTERIOR VIEW OF LIFE OFFICE. y Beokishaess Crematory (or Rejected MSS. without stamps. Coalgron ahed tee bolling teag articles. K! Asylum for Subscribers te Puch (padded cells.) OUR ESTABLISHMENT, S so many of our enterprising contemporaries are ad- vertising the fact that they have new buildings, we can no longer conceal the fact that we too are guilty of a most flagrant degree of prosperity. It is perhaps not generally known that the proprietors of | this journal have recently erected a few dozen edifices to | be devoted exclusively to those connected financially or otherwise with our staff. Any words of descriptive praise of our new offices might be deemed fulsome, and with a de- gree of modesty which we unassumingly though firmly pro- | nounce becoming, we content ourselves with simply offering a few views of this new evidence of our success, taken on the spots by our artists. Plate I., with accompanying explanatory notes, represents the general bird's eye view of our establishment. We may say here that a bird's eye is small and unable to grasp as many beauties at one swoop as the more highly endowed orb of mankind, and that our bird has omitted many details of our magnificence. Imperfect as the picture is, however, we produce it without a pang. Among the omitted beauties there are included an Oubliette for the man who forgets to pay his subscription, and a Gallows for the man who hangs around the office and talks all day long. This last helps the man to hang around, but prevents his talking. It is simply a delicate method of ours to keep his feelings from being hurt. M. Opera House and Lyceum for Dramatic Editor. hi, Aoylom taf Spring Poets, Mearses direct to Pe Subseries’ awcacee ‘S. Cemetery for Tardy Subscribers. We should likewise like to-call attention to the crowd around the subscription door, and to the unusually small number of occupants of our burial ground. As the de- scriptive note beneath the pic- ture intimates, these mortu- ary friends of ours were chiefly those who failed to renew and died either from melancho- lia or some other simi- lar disease immediate- ly after. In justice to our special undertaker, who has charge of our humor- ous depart- ment, we must confess that four of the headstones com- memorate Presbyterian Deacons who laughed themselves to death over our pages. In plate three is given an interior view of our office. Simply Prate Il. ANNEX FOR ASPIRING ARTISTS. comicbooks.com