Life, 1895-10-31 · page 9 of 18
Life — October 31, 1895 — page 9: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# "A Discerning Friend" and "Evolution" The top cartoon shows an artist displaying his work to a critical friend. The friend praises it as "best work you ever did" while asking what it represents—a joke about abstract or modernist art that's so non-representational the viewer cannot identify its subject. Below, the poem "Evolution" satirizes changing fashion and social norms regarding violets (flowers). It contrasts Victorian-era violets—modest wildflowers worn simply by country women—with contemporary urban violets: now dyed in vivid colors, worn at fashionable events and dances, and even adopted as symbols by Vassar college students. The satire mocks how modernity transforms innocent natural things into markers of commercialized, urban sophistication.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
The Artist: A DISCERNING FRIEND. How bo you LIke IT? The Friend; Best WORK YOU EVER DID, WHAT DOES IT REPRESENT ? HEY tell a tale of long ago, How violets once were meek, And shyly held their faces low, Hid midst the grasses deep. They lived in country wildwoods then — ‘They seldom came to town ; Each wore a dainty hood of green, And a single-skirted gown. EVOLUTION. But now the country violet Is sadly out of date; To-day each little purple skirt Is ruffled to the waist ; And violets haunt the city marts, In hot-house realms they dwell ; To dances, dinners, balls, and routs They follow beau and belle, They've changed for richer odor, too, The dainty woodland scent ; And as the Christmas roses blow, And lilies after Lent, So violets have laid upon One day a special claim— They own Yale college students, and Thanksgiving’s football game !