Life, 1886-09-09 · page 2 of 16
Life — September 9, 1886 — page 2: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Analysis of Life Magazine, September 9, 1886 The header illustration titled "While there's Life there's Hope" depicts a skeletal Death figure looming over a landscape. This appears to be a memento mori design—a traditional allegorical image warning of mortality's inevitability. The text contains editorial commentary on contemporary events, including Secretary Bayard's diplomatic mission to Mexico and references to Alexander (likely the Bulgarian monarch mentioned in dispatches). A notable item discusses Chicago's competitive ambitions following earthquakes in Greece, satirizing the city's boastful claims to grandeur. The magazine also references "Holmes again from a foreign shore," likely referring to a notable public figure, and mentions social items about Bar Harbor society and a Jersey City pension dispute involving a Bunker Hill battle veteran. The page is primarily text-based editorial commentary rather than elaborate cartooning.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Published every Thursday, $5 a year in advance, postage free. Single copies, 10 cents. Back numbers can be had by applying to this office. Vol. I., $1.50 per number ; Vol. II., 25 cents per number ; Vol. III., IV., V., VI. and VIL. at regular rates. Rejected contributions will be destroyed unless accompanied by a stamped and directed envelope. | HE report that Secretary Bayard’s envoy to Mexico has enjoyed the hospitalities of the Mexican capital to an undue extent is to be accepted with very moderate confidence. His mission was to find out the truth in the Cutting matter, and in similar international entanglements, but Mr. Bayard distinctly denies that Mr. Sedgwick was empowered to search for it 2% vino. The envoy may have found it desirable to give the Mexican young gentlemen an opportunity to free their | minds, and may have considered that convivial surroundings would tend to diminish their natural reticence ; and following some erroneous notion as to the requirements of his mission his feet may have scolloped to some trifling extent along the edge of the path of diplomatic discretion. But that he ever made so serious a lapse as the newspapers describe, LIFE does not propose to believe. Mr. Bayard might surely be trusted to senda hard-headed agent on such a mission. If anything disreputable really occurred to Mr. Sedgwick, it must have been due to some unnatural combination of | intoxicants, which may be grounds for another international | difficulty. * * * LEXANDER, who was lost for several days, is found again, and is King of Bulgaria up to the hour of our going to press. During several days the cable dispatches reported his presence in most of the considerable towns between Constantinople, Vienna, and St. Petersburg, crediting him with a degree of ubiquity unsurpassed except in the single instance of General Washington’s body-servant. It remains a dark mystery who stole him away. The Czar disclaims the kidnapping as emphatically as the birds in the nursery rhyme denied the killing of Cock Robin. But that has not effaced the impression that it was the Czar that did it, in the hope that the prince, once out of the country, would not be missed. If Alexander is as prudent as he is brave, he will make his bed hereafter in his office safe, and omit to advise the Czar of the combination. | hand was no check to the enterprise. HERE are no limits to the audacious ambition of Chicago. Learning last week of the earthquakes in Greece, and believing that country to be a rival lard center, her citizens instantly resolved to outdo the quakings of the Peloponnesus. The fact that no natural earthquake was at The anarchists have taught Cook county several things, and it was the work of a | few hours only to have a powder magazine struck by lightning, | and windows broken for seven miles around. Chicago men now point to a hole in the ground in their suburbs, and deris- ively exclaim, “ Where’s Greece!” * * * ND by the way, if there is one specialty in which more than another Chicago does her full duty, it is in fur- nishing news to the Associated Press. In this she finds a constant rival in Boston, who has pressed her hard lately with poisonings and embezzlements in high life. But Boston has no pronounced anarchists. There is where Chicago leaves her. When the gossip about the Mayflower has gone far enough, Chicago has only to dig out a burrow of dynamiters to distract public attention. * * * EVER mind if we can’t play polo. LIFE for one is not unduly ambitious to surpass the British at that sport. * * * “cc OLMES again from a foreign shore,” sings a con- temporary. It was on his seventy-seventh birth- day that the autocrat landed in New York. Preparations for Harvard's big celebration will now go on with greater zest. * * * HE sea-serpent continues to disappear off the New Eng- land coast. As soon as New York has buried her tele- graph wires, the elusive reptile is to be caught and-moored in the East River, where he will be fed upon the droppings from the East River bridge. Thus may two great nuisances “be abated. * * * HE summer has passed and the harvest has ended, and still there are pretty lively times at Bar Harbor and New- port, and down on the Jersey shore. Another month, and the rich will return, and the poor will cease to blush when they meet one another on Fifth Avenue and Broadway. * * * A YOUNG man in Jersey City recently applied for a pension on the ground that his great-grandfather had been shot through the lungs at the battle of Bunker Hill. This the truckling administration refused, fearing lest it might offend Great Britain. We'll have the queen in the | White House yet. : comicbooks.com