Life — December 5, 1896 — page 31: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

LIFE TO HIS READERS. OOD greeting, gentle reader, and have patience to step aside a moment, and learn that among all the blessings of the coming year, not the least will be the joys of LIFE. If LIFE in the past has been frank, fearless, and judiciously frivolous, do not hesitate to believe that LIFE in the future will breathe the same spirit as heretofore. But it will be something more to you than this. It will be bigger, brighter, and better. It will contain new features to amuse, to interest, and to charm. It will take on an added wisdom and sprightliness, while of malice or uncharitableness there will be found among its pages no trace; rather, as in the past, a wholesome contempt of all fraud and humbug, for you will have read it in vain if you have failed to detect the true spirit of its being. Those who know LIFE well will have no cause to complain. The old contributors, and many new ones, will be there to cheer the way, gladden the eye, and dwarf the spirit of dull care. But there will also be fresh departures and constant surprises to satisfy the wants of all. LIFE will contain the best, in whatever line. Its pictures will be made by the first artists, and will not be cheap reproductions of popular photographs. They will depict flesh and blood ideas, and the lover of art, the student of humanity, and even the jaded reader who wishes only to be amused, will all be satisfied. Its writers will be the best writers, and in its warfare against all that is cruel, and unjust, and wrong, the shafts of its wit will not lose their potency. Every line of LIFE during the coming year will be worth reading. comicbooks.com