Life, 1889-08-29 · page 7 of 16
Life — August 29, 1889 — page 7: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Page 119 Analysis: Life Magazine This page contains three separate humorous pieces: 1. **"Heard in Shantytown"**: A dialogue joke featuring working-class characters (Pat and Dinney) discussing how to repair damaged fishing boats using improvised methods—satirizing lower-class resourcefulness and their distinctive dialect speech patterns. 2. **"Stranger than Fiction"**: A brief commentary by Flack criticizing what appears to be artistic or literary excess—mocking pretentious creative work. 3. **"A Father's Feelings"**: A cartoon showing a man hearing his fiancée's engagement announcement, responding with shock at her choice of language. The humor lies in the father's prudish reaction to her colorful speech. The page emphasizes class-based humor and social commentary typical of early 20th-century American satirical magazines, targeting working-class dialect and Victorian propriety violations.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Steinheim (on the left): SO DEY OPJECT TO OUR PLAYIN’ CARDS BY DER HOTEL OF a SUNDAY, DO DEY, Wot's DER MATTER MIT DIS? unpleasant in the mouth as sterile nuts;" and that “his conception of life is crooked, ill-balanced, and out of tune.” HIS is rank heresy, but even one of Meredith's disciples can forgive him when he has added: “ There is no trace of the crowd about him. I do not question his right of place; I am out of sympathy with him, that is all. And 1 regret that it should be so, for he is one whose love of art is pure and untaint- ed with commercialism.” . . . O™ may pick out a score or more of things as good as this, and yet be offended on many pages with immature, unmanly and venomous senti- ments. All that we claim is that it is not right to judge a book entirely from the moral standpoint. The present irruption of unseemly books is, no doubt, in part, a reaction from this wrong standard of judgment. Droch. NEW sBo0oKs TALES. By Heiorich Zschokke. New York and Londan: G. P. Putnam's Sons. Great Words from Great Americans. New York and Londoo: G. P. Putnam's Sons. AT. (resting on his hammer): Oi soy, Dinney, phwat’s the use of our dhrillin’ them howles in th’ rocks, whin theyre after blowin’ them all to pieces wid a bhlast whiniver we're afther gittin thro’ makin’ uv um? DiInNEY: Oi don't know, Pat, but it's shure Oi am Oi think that if sum fellah ‘ud be afther invintin’ a machane that ‘ud make the howle so they could use it over agin afther havin’ a blahst, he ‘ud make his fortun’, so Oi doo. STRANGER THAN FICTION, A PATHER'’S FEELINGS, He: WHAT DID YOUR PATER SAY WHEN YOU TOLD HIM WE WERE EXOAGED? She: OM, YOU MUST NOT ASK ME TO REPEAT SUCH LANGUAGE! comicbooks.com