Life, 1891-02-12 · page 9 of 14
Life — February 12, 1891 — page 9: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Analysis of Life Magazine Page 99 This page contains social satire about writers' career prospects and a satirical account of a beer-garden management scandal at Madison Square Garden. **Top section:** The text and small illustrations ("Small Talk" and "Old Style") discuss the economic struggle of professional writers. It contrasts the meager returns from serious literary work against other occupations, satirizing the romantic notion that writing offers financial security. **Main illustration and article:** "The Touch of the Beer-Gardener" critiques the mismanagement of the Madison Square Garden's beer concession. The scene depicts well-dressed patrons attempting to enter a social event, apparently being overcharged or harassed by ticket holders. The dialogue indicates frustration with inflated prices and poor service—satire directed at the proprietors' incompetence and profiteering in managing public entertainment.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
->LIFE- HE trouble is that writers expect to reap the rewards of one kind of life from another. If you go down in the “Swamp " and toil from 8 A. M. to 6 P. M. for forty years you may be able to leave two millions to colleges. If you string your nerves to the breaking pitch for six hours a day in Wall Street you may in time own a house on the Avenue with all that implies, or you may become a clerk, in the office you once ruled, at ten dollars a week, But if you want to make a decent living for seven children, and sit all day in a little den filled with books, and work eight months of the year—the “trade of writing” seems to SMALL TALK, offer some possibilities. “OLD STYLE.” “AND SO YOU ARE BACK FROM EUROPE, AND WITHOUT BF, “WELL, YES; YOU SEE ALL THE CHEAP DUKES ARF GON G ENGAGED." NOW, AND NOTHING ELSE WOULD SATISFY Mb." THE TOUCH OF THE BEER-GARDENER. LAGER BEER as applied to the management of public affairs is not a success, if one can judge by the recent Carmencita Ball, Koster & Bial, proprietors of a Twenty-third Street beer garden, undertook the affair. Just what the beer garden standard is it would be difficult to say, but on this occa- sion the vestibule of the Madison Square Garden resembled a Yale-Princeton rush. A brutish disregard of the public con- venience, abetted by a thorough absence of intelligence were the distinguishing features of this disgraceful scene. Hun- dreds went away in disgust rather than try to enter. Every comer, having already bought the right to go in, was informed that he must pay another dollar for a “ hat check.” And the lamblike ticket holders, instead of insisting on their rights and entering the hall, left those they were escorting, and struggled for an hour or more in the seething, cursing crush, to reach the box office. All this was “ Under the Auspices of the N. Y, Amusement Co,” comicbooks.com