Life, 1888-04-26 · page 12 of 18
Life — April 26, 1888 — page 12: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Life Magazine Satirical Content Analysis This page contains several short satirical pieces mocking contemporary absurdities and notable figures: **"Strange Signs"** ridicules unnecessary signage, particularly "Ladies' Entrance" markers at public venues—the satire being that women obviously know how to enter establishments without instruction. **"Experience"** is a one-liner joke about Jay Gould (the prominent Gilded Age industrialist/railroad magnate), implying he instructs his office boy to burn letters to newspapers—satirizing Gould's reputation for avoiding public scrutiny and controlling his image. **"A Poor Substitute"** features a nearsighted "Doctor Duck" hawking fake "Ostrich Tonic" as an appetite stimulant—mocking quack medicine and patent remedies common in the era. **"No Room for Doubt"** uses a Native American returning from abroad to satirize missionary efforts and "civilization," suggesting signs (like newspapers) represent colonial intrusion. **"A Merciful Judge"** presents dark humor: a judge reverses a five-year sentence to life imprisonment on medical grounds—ironic "mercy." **"Mother Goose"** parodies Walt Whitman's verbose, pseudo-scientific writing style through an absurdly overwrought retelling of "Jack Horner."
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
STRANGE SIGNS. F all the exhortations I never could abide, Is the one that notifies me To ‘‘Shine Inside.” 'Tis most absurd to tell me By a sign at which I glance, As I enter some Volksgarten, That ‘‘ Ladies’ Entrance.” Did I ever up and question That I should shine inside, And that the bright interior light Should be my guide? And does any one imagine That ladies don’t entrance? What need of signs to say these things, With circumstance? EXPERIENCE. FFICE BOY (¢o Jay Gould): What shall I do with these letters to the newspapers you have just written, sir? Jay GOULD: Burn them. F stolen jokes could go to Heaven when they died, what an accusing throng would meet at the Gate Beautiful when the shade of a religious periodical appeared ! A POOR SUBSTITUTE. Doctor Duck (very near-sighted): YOU WANT SOME- THING? HAVEN'T BEEN ABLE TO EAT A SQUARE MEAL IN THREE WEEKS? WELL, MY GOOD SIR, YOU JUST TAKE THIS BOTTLE OF MY OSTRICH TONIC, AND IT WILL GIVE YOU A SPLENDID APPETITE. NO ROOM FOR DOUBT. Man-not-afratd-of-a-drunk (who has just returned to his father’s wigwam after a year's travel abroad): AW! THE MISSIONARIES MUST HAVE BEEN AT WORK HERE, FOR I SEE ONE OF THE SIGNS OF CIVILIZATION. A MERCIFUL JUDGE. “ UT, your Honor,” pleaded the prisoner, “the physician’s evi- dence is to the effect that I cannot live to serve a sentence of five years.” “Inasmuch as the jury has recommended you to the mercy of the court,” responded his Honor, “and in view of the precarious condition of your health, therefore be it known that I hereby reverse the sentence of five years, and simply send you up for life.” MOTHER GOOSE. (AS RENDERED BY W—T WH-TM-N.) HERE the north wall of the domicile of the Horner family im- pinges upon the east wall of the same habitation, Forming a right angle, One day sat the diminutive and juvenile scion of the house, whose pranomen was Jack, Engaged in converting into bodily pabulum a plethoric piece of pastry of the Christmas variety— Pie, circumferential, obese, and containing seventeen twinges of stomach-ache to the cubic inch ; Pie, whose inner recesses were filled with the edible fruit of a tree of the genus Prunus. (Fruit luscious, a drupe, containing a nut or stone, with prominent sutures, and enclosing a kernel.) Inserting therein the digit attached to the metacarpus, in close proximity to the carpus— Digit short, thick, and not infrequently called the thumb— He extracted from its interior department, a specimen of the drupe aforesaid, and observed, in a large, red tone of voice: ‘“ What an extensive specimen of the immature genus homo am I—big, massive, somewhat excessive, lengthy in circumference, and propor- tionately altitudinous, if not more so!” Wm. H. Siviter. comicbooks.com