Life, 1896-01-30 · page 9 of 20
Life — January 30, 1896 — page 9: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Analysis of Life Magazine Page 77 This page contains literary criticism and humorous dialogue sketches rather than political cartoons. The main content reviews a book (likely by Mr. Garland) about the American West, praising its realistic depiction of landscape and rural life, particularly country schools and colleges. Three illustrated jokes appear: 1. **"No Telling"** and **"A Better Arrangement"** are brief comedic dialogues playing on misunderstandings about dinner invitations and barbershop timing—common domestic humor of the era. 2. **"An Important Point"** features a romantic scenario with a mild sexual innuendo joke about deciding who is "naughty." 3. The right-side illustration labeled "The Explanation of the 'Bicycle Face'" appears to reference period concerns about women's cycling affecting their facial appearance—a genuine worry among Victorian commentators.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
* LIFE « 77 storm on Lake Michigan as seen from the shore at Chicago. He forgets to be self-conscious, and makes his phrases count for color. But for simple, honest pathos, Mr. Garland has never equalled his portrait of Rose's father. “It is ‘sincere; homely, dignified and altogether fine. The book is marred by certain swaggering physical franknesses that are wholly bad. They will hurt nobody but the author, who must know in his sincerest moments that reticence is as necessary a quality of the highest art as expression. There are some things that decent people take for granted, and the author's undoubted sincerity of motive in expressing them does not make them less offensive. Droch. NO TELLING. RNGwAY: Your sister expects me to dinner, doesn't she, Willie? WILLIE: Oh yes. She said she didn't know but what you might stay to breakfast. A BETTER ARRANGEMENT. UGGINS: Hello, Kissam, had your hair cut? KissaM: Yes, dear boy. I found a place where they cut your hair while you wait. Hucoins: That 's good. A barber shop is usually a place where they cut some other man’s hair while you wait. AN IMPORTANT POINT. “Now, FREDDIE, THE MOMENT YOU'RE NAUGHTY, LoUISe WILL PUT YOU TO BED.” “Say, Ma, WHICH OF US IS TO DECIDE IF I'M NAUGHTY ?" Mr. Garland has therefore drawn a romantic but entirely possible character in Rose. The crudities that we laugh at in her, we have also laughed at in the real men and women from her own big West who knew what they wanted, and went ahead and got it. o 8 @ The things which Mr. Garland has really seen and felt he describes with a picturesque precision that is entirely admirable. He has made real for us the landscape of the coulé in bits of poetical description. The country school is done without a touch of caricature. Any one who has known the feel of its benches and the smell of its chalky blackboards, will get the real thrill when he reads this book. The glimpses he gives of a western co-educational college are new material in fiction, and are most interesting. ; THO ESPCANATION OF Fue" BCYOLE As a bit of writing the best thing in the book is his description of the great FACE." comicbooks.com