Life, 1894-11-15 · page 4 of 16
Life — November 15, 1894 — page 4: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Life Magazine, November 15, 1894 - Page Analysis The page contains two main editorial pieces rather than political cartoons. The **first section** discusses the recent William Astor and Drayton family domestic scandal reported in newspapers. The editor criticizes how New York papers sensationalized these wealthy families' personal troubles, contrasting this with country papers that avoid such gossip. The **second section** comments on London's efforts to remove "irregular" poor people from public view before social events. The editor notes this creates temporary cosmetic solutions—crowds still develop vice problems once enforcement relaxes—and suggests respectability requires genuine moral improvement, not just managing appearances. Neither section contains caricatures. Both use satire to critique social hypocrisy among the wealthy and governmental superficiality in addressing poverty.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
W™While there is Life there's Hops.” VOL. XXIV, NOVEMBER 15, 1894. No, 620. 1g West Tuirty-First Street, New York, Published every Thursday, $s.0o.a year in advance. Postage to foreign countries in the Postal Union, $1.04 a year, extra. Single copies, 10 cents. Rejected contributions will be destroyed unless accompanied by a stamped and directed envelope. HANKS to the industry of the New York newspaper men and the far-reaching enter- prise of two rival news associations, there is no literate person in the land, however poor, obscure or remote, who may not hope to make himself thoroughly con- \\ versant with all the circumstances which . contributed to the lapse of matri- monial relations between the daugh- her husband. That the familiars Cif of the Astor family in New York and Newport should be interested in the domestic disasters of the Dray- tons is perhaps in accordance with nature, but to find the details of these same disasters reported by telegraph and published with exclamatory head- lines on the front pages of the journals = of Chicago, Keokuk, Oshkosh and Sacra- mento, fairly affords a basis for surprise. Verily, New York zs the American metropolis, and to be eminent, even finan- cially and socially eminent in New York, is to attain to a national conspicuity. Allthe same, the country papers that load themselves with such literature as this gossip of the Draytons, put their valuable space to very poor use, and afflict their patrons with an exceptionally unnecessary and. disagreeable lot of reading. . . . ONDON is all by the ears over the new effort of Mrs. Ormiston Chant and the Social Purity organizations to induce the men and women of irregular morals to keep out of sight. The difficulty is that as soon as the men and women so, described select a place to withdraw to, it im- mediately becomes crowded with virtuous persons who come to look at them. The crowd makes the place conspicuous and the trouble begins again. It is very hard to make vice conduct itself so that it shall be satisfactory to thoroughly respectable people. ~ ly be equal to it. LECTION being over, due attention can be given to the important labors of the Horse Show. It is a wholesome change to turn from the consideration of men, and fix one’s attention for a week upon horses. Men grow tiresome. Even the best of them are often disappointing, and persistent newspaper reading before election usually leaves one with the impression that the choice of men must always be a choice of evils. What each man knows about himself confirms him in that impression. But with horses it is some- what different. Evil lurks in horses too, but some horses are so much better than others as to erfcourage even the most despondent observer to hope that sometime it may happen to him to own a really good one. Never having been a horse, man has not that intimate realization of innate equine imperfection that forbids him to believe that a perfect horse may exist. He keeps on trying to buy or breed one, and even if he is not absolutely successful his progress is satis- factory enough to incite him to continued efforts. Do not be ashamed in this horse week to talk horse as continuously as you desire. Horse talk is not the wisest talk in the world, but at least it is sound, wholesome chatter. It is not scandalous nor ill-natured. You may talk it six days running, from morning until late at night, and say nothing that you will be really sorry for over Sunday. That is a great deal to say for any species of talk. Go then to the Horse Show as often as your purse will admit. You may not know much more at the end of the week than you do now, but at least you will have amused yourself innocently, and in so far as you may add to your knowledge of horses, you gain a new and wholesome interest in life. * * iG can be truthfully said of the late Czar of Rus- sia that he was an honest gentleman who tried hard to do his duty. He was a good man, as his father was before him, and enjoyed in the hap- piness of his domestic life some of the advantages of that con- dition, If his job exceeded his powers it was not his fault. His abilities were good and faithfully em- ployed, and it was his misfortune to be born to a task so huge that the greatest of men could hard- To bring modern civilization and good government to Russia is a work rather for generations, and the slow march of events, than for sudden accomplishment by individual rulers. The late Czar did his best at it. The guardianship of the peace of Europe, croakers tell us, is getting into young hands. Some of the monarchs may be young, but their bankers are just as old as ever, and war will not flourish much in Europe unless bankers and emperors can agree. comicbooks.com