Life, 1895-07-04 · page 13 of 18
Life — July 4, 1895 — page 13: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains three separate pieces mocking courtship and romance conventions: **"No Triflers Wanted"** depicts a modern woman rejecting sentimental male posturing—she demands men stop pledging eternal love and instead "come right down to business" once they're financially established. This satirizes the clash between Victorian romance rhetoric and emerging female pragmatism. **"That Dear Typewriter Has Gone Away"** is a sentimental poem from an office boy mourning a female coworker ("Mary") who quit her $20/week job after marrying. The narrator romanticizes her unattainability while accepting her departure as inevitable—satire of working-class male sentimentality and the period's assumption that marriage meant women left employment. **"A Mistake"** shows a Chinese man (rendered in period-offensive dialect) tying firecrackers to a billiards player's cue as a "joke," while below, an elderly man proposes to a young woman who accepts his offer to be "a father" instead of a husband—dark humor about unsuitable age-gap relationships. All three pieces satirize contemporary romantic and gender dynamics of the early 1900s.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
NO TRIFLERS WANTED. She; 1 DON’T MIND Wal WITH YOU, BUT FOR GOODNESS SAKE DON'T SAY YOU LOVE ME AND ASK ME TO WAIT FOR YOU—THEY ALL DO THAT. IF THERE'S ANY WAITING TO RE DONE WAIT YOURSELF UNTIL YOU'RE A MAN, AND THEN COME RIGHT DOWN TO BUSINESS, to supply answers to correspondents in the toilet column of The Young Ladies’ Philadelphia Home Journal under the pseudonym of Maggie Macassor Oil. M. Levy is an intelligent young man, who makes every use of the opportunities afforded him. He has visited Hoboken, Brooklyn, Jersey Heights, the Statue of Liberty, Coney Island, and even been on a Fall River boat and a Pullman dining car. He will publish his “Impressions of America” as soon as David Christie Murray gets through his, and will get the start of Cissy Fitzgerald if he can. Itis not yet known if he will lecture. There is a good opening for him, as since Sandow stopped allowing himself to be felt and handled there has been a distinct lack of some refined entertainment. Jessie M. Wood. THAT DEAR TYPEWRITER HAS GONE AWAY. IRLS they must marry, I s'pose, but us boys we all wished Mary wouldn't. "Course, at six dollars a week, wan't none of us as could hope Ever to marry her so as to get her to stay—naw ! we couldn't. Why, she made twenty, herself—marry us? Nope! Cali her Mary? I guess not! There wasn't nobody dazzent. Just to ourselves we said Mary ; I did, | mean, in me mind. Name seemed to fit her, sort of ; little and sweet ; but she hasn't Give no permish— she wasn’t that kind. Lord! What a dif it made in the shop when the boss he hired her. Catch me missin’ a day and her sittin’ ‘round the place! Called me ** Tom” all right, and [ bet she knew we admired her— Nice low voice she’s got and a baby face. ‘Taint no use my thinkin’ how pretty her lips when she smiled was— Droop at one end of her mouth and white little teeth like rice— X& Them lips ain't for me: no such luck ; all my chances they sp'iled was When I was born so dumb stupid and her so nice. Said good-bye to me, and she seemed kind of sorry to leave us. Don’t know where she is now, East or West ; she is happy, I hope. Bet you I know who is happy ; he'd oughter be, just you believe us, Well—we couldn't expect Aer to marry us. Nope! The Office Boy. A MISTAKE. Sing Lee: Aw, CHINAMAN, ME PLAYEE JOKE AN’ TIE FIRECLACKERS TO HIS CUE. R. OLDBOY : Say that you will be mine! SHE: I cannot marry you, but I tell you what I will do, I'll let you be a father to me. comicbooks.com