Life, 1894-11-22 · page 12 of 24
Life — November 22, 1894 — page 12: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Life Magazine Page 334 Analysis This page contains several short humorous pieces and one satirical cartoon: **Text pieces** include domestic comedies (a woman claiming she can't fabricate stories due to her honest ancestry; a Broadway pickup line) and a Professor Von Gookenheimer joke about mind-reading—humorously defined as the ability to get a restaurant waiter's attention merely by staring. **Main feature**: A dialect poem by Josh Whitcomb Field praising the inventor of cold potatoes as a cure for marital passion. The narrator claims cold potatoes extinguished his ardor after marriage, comparing it favorably to famous inventors like Edison and Franklin. The humor relies on rural dialect and the absurdist premise. **Cartoon**: "Football in Africa" depicts an elephant as the "Inter-Collegiate Champion" kicking a small figure in exotic dress. The joke appears to be about the incongruity of American college football rules applied to African wildlife—treating the elephant as an athletic competitor. This reflects period attitudes about colonialism and racial hierarchy, presenting Africa as comically primitive or animal-like.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
334 “Yes,” Daisy went on, “1am like grandma. She never turned a clock on or set one slow for any man. After she was married she never mentioned her servants to any one. She never told her children’s smart sayings, or got a new gown from her husband on the plea that she hadn’t a thing to wear. She never said she was nervous when she was only cross, and, many times as she went to Europe, she never smuggled so much as a pair of gloves. You see, girls,” she finished, with another longing look at the rug, “ how useless it is for me to try to make up a story, coming from such stock as that.” The girls gazed on her a moment with pitying wonder, and then with one accord they made a rush for the rug. “Take it, Daisy!” cried Adelaide. “ They all withdraw in your favor. In making one excuse you have told ten stories for yourself and fastened a dozen on your grand- mother. Anna Pierpont Siviter. NOT ON THE STAGE. SHE: 1 took you for an actor the first time I saw you. Henry De Coury FooreicHTs: And where was that ? “Tsaw you walking down Broadway with yourself.” ROFESSOR VON GOOKENHEIMER, they sai a most marvelous mind-reader and hypnotist.’ “Yes; he claims he can attract the attention of a restaurant waiter by merely looking at him steadily for half an hour.” “NAUGHTY BUT * LIFE: THE WIZARDEST WIZARD OF ALL. LM AIN'T bankin’ much on wizards what invents them phony- graphs, 'N' Lain’t dead stuck on them old ducks as found the telygraphs. Bobby Fulton don’t impress me, nor am I a wond’rin’ much At Ben Franklin, Doctor Pasture, ‘Tommy Edison 'n’ such; But the wonderfullest feller, 'n’ the one I makes most of, Is the cuss as what discovered cold pertaters squelches love ! nM, How he done it, when he done it, is a thing I never seed. How he set about a findin’ it, 'n’ then persood the deed ‘Til he saw that he was wrastlin’ with a bustin’ big idee, Is the alfired bloomin’ myst For we can’t deny the the'ry fits ter Nater’ like a glove, That them cold pertaters works like all persessed at curin’ love! um. Are it true, sir? Ain't I proved it? Why, when Sairy married me I just loved that purty damsel like the sardine loves the sea. Why, the biskits that gal cooked me when I came around ter court Uster set mer heart a pitypat, 'n’ made mer pulses snort— But ter-day we never speaks of love—no, sir / we allers shun it; 's nothin’ more than cold pertaters three times a day as done it! Josh Whitcomb Field, £7 DO not think Binks was entirely to blame, but there are some features of the case which look dark for him “ What are they?" “ Mrs. Binks’s,” FOOTBALL IN AFRICA. THe INTER-COLLEGIATE CHAMPION AGAINST ALL COMERS—THE First Goat. comicbooks.com