Life, 1886-06-24 · page 12 of 21
Life — June 24, 1886 — page 12: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Analysis of Life Magazine Page 360 This page satirizes upper-class attitudes toward education and morality through a mock "Lord Chesterfield" letter advising a college-bound son. The satire inverts proper values: the father recommends avoiding learning, cultivating only rich friends for exploitation, pursuing mediocrity, and distrusting women—all presented as fashionable society norms. The humor targets Gilded Age excess: ignorance as status symbol, sports over intellect, and cynical social climbing. The "Baseball Vocabulary" section uses baseball terminology to mock contemporary life (the "champion catcher" is a wealthy Newport belle; "home run" is a boy evading police). Three small cartoons below depict a man courting a woman on park benches, using dubious tactics to "smoke her out"—she eventually leaves, revealing she preferred the sunny spot, not his company. The overall message criticizes how wealthy American society values superficiality, moral flexibility, and calculated self-interest over genuine accomplishment or virtue.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
360 LORD CHESTERFIELD TO HIS SON. (MODERNIZED.) €yY son, as you are “about to face the great world at college, and as I have had con- siderable experience in the wicked ways of this life, 1 think it would be | well for you to listen to my advice for a few mo- ments, You are going to col- lege—as you know— solely to have a good time, make acquaintances, and to learn to row and play ball. Do not learn anything else except to judge horses and sail yachts, as this is an age when it is fashionable to be ignorant, and whatever is fashionable is right. It was not so very many years ago that things were different, and young peo- ple were—or tried to be—accomplished and gave evidence of | having some traces of brains, but we have changed all that now, and gone in for stupidity, on the ground that only poor, low-down chaps who work for a living are brilliant and brainy nowadays. Above all, never read anything beyond the sporting papers, as you might run the chance of being called a literary feller, and there is nothing society hates so much, as it considers it an assumption that you know more than other people and of course the other people are howling mad. Be careful to select your friends among the rich, and remember that your friends are your friends for what they can get out of you, and wice versa. Strive for mediocrity in all things and you will always be popular. If you rise to greatness in anything you will be - LIFE: hated. Greatness, by the way, is an unknown quantity, the result of advertising. You will find womankind divided into two classes, the brilliant, bad and beautiful; and the good, homely and stupid. Keep away from them all if you can, but you can’t. Above all, though, never trust a woman. Keep this maxim always before you, let it ever float before your mind's eye like a moral Mohammed's coffin.” If at any time you feel a desire to get married, go and buy a horse at auction; it is much the same thing, except that in case you are “caught "—and you probably will be—you can get off with a trifling loss. If you are ever undecided upon any important affair, ask the advice of your best friends on the matter and then do the exact opposite, At the end of your college course you will go abroad, and the result of the trip will be that you will learn that Ameri- cans are vulgar, English brutal, and the Continent immoral, and that the latter condition is the most preferable. You will also be—ah, asleep?” RK. LIFE’S BASEBALL VOCABULARY. FAVORITE pitcher—The beer jug. A base hit—Slugged by a footpad. Not out—A prisoner at the Tombs. A good strike—The car drivers. The champion catcher—The belle of Newport. The home stretch—Young America under the maternal slipper. A heavy batter—Restaurant wheat cakes. High ball—The Charity. A bad score—The liquor dealer’s slate. Home run—Small boy chased by the Finest. Short stop—Brake on a Twenty-third street bobtail car. Query—How many baseball leagues make a mile? BENE. who has been waiting a long time for some- thing to turn up, had his wish gratified the other day when he stepped on a barrel-hoop. GUESS I'LL TAKE THE SHADY END AND SEE IF I CAN'T SMOKE HER OUT. IT works! SHE DEPARTS, AT THE SAME TIME REVEAL- ING, THE CAUSE OF HER PREFERENCE FOR THE SUNNY END- comicbooks.com