Life, 1896-04-02 · page 15 of 32
Life — April 2, 1896 — page 15: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page presents a poem titled "Easter Finery" by Wood Levette Wilson, accompanied by an illustration of an elegantly dressed woman in an elaborate gown and hat, surrounded by admirers. The satire is social rather than political: it mocks the tradition of wearing new, expensive clothing to Easter church services. The poem cleverly compares Easter flowers to fashionable women attending church, suggesting that like lilies that spent Lent in conservatories being carefully cultivated, wealthy women spend the Lenten season preparing their wardrobes and appearance for Easter display. The joke targets vanity and materialism—the implication that Easter attendance is as much about exhibiting fine clothing as genuine religious devotion. The illustration's focus on the woman's elaborate dress, jewelry, and feathered hat reinforces this critique of conspicuous consumption disguised as religious observance, a common target of *Life* magazine's social satire during the early 20th century.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
HE buds that bloom on Easter Day Are fairer far, I trow, Than those that grace the days of May When gentler zephyrs blow. The lily nodding in the breeze Can by no circumstance, In raiment, be compared with these Conservatory plants. They toiled not, neither did they spin, But thirty days they spent In idleness repenting sin— The slow fast-time of Lent. Lent’s last ten suns looked down on more Than penitence and gloom; It saw corollas forming for The buds to burst in bloom. Ah! fairer than the blooms of May, When gentle zephyrs blow, Are buds that bloom on Easter Day And go to church, I trow! Wood Levette Wilson,