Life — January 21, 1897 — page 15: what you’re looking at

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

eiitessAabiit ars. MR. LARRY O'CAMPRELL IS NOW IN THIS COUNTRY LECTURING UPON “THE CHARAC* TERISTICS OF SCOTCH-IRISH WIT." HE'S 4 GUDE MON TA HEER, BEJABDERS ! WATER. Tt railway magnates lost not heart, Nor yielded to dismay; here's so much water in our stock, Let's have a pool,” quoth they. URGERY and dermatology have made remarkable progress of late. The person who wears homely and ungainly features nowadays must blame himself, and not nature or his parents. The woman whose nose sports a hump like a last year’s bicycle rider, and whose eyes are so badly crossed that they are in the habit of turning around and looking reproachfully back into her own face, can now be transformed into one of those delicious, tripping beauties that seem to reside almost exclusively in magazine illustrations. Peculiar developments will result from the growing popularity of this method. It lies within the power of all of us to change our features to whatever shape desired, What if this practice had been in common vogue a couple of years ago, when the Napoleon craze swept over the country as resistless as an era of hard times across the Western ec » prairies? Three-quarters of our men would have had their faces pared, or stuffed, to re- semble the saturnine physiognomy of the “Man of Destiny.” At the same time the ladies would have exhibited the red hair and vacant features of unfortunate Trilby. Identification would have been difficult. Then, there is a still more unfavorable side to the matter. Some Weary William could lift a purse, have his features worked over into the Vanderbilt style, and run up bills galore against that money. ig. An obscure pettifogger, who never took part in any case except the trifling affair of John Doe and Richard Roe, could secure the features of the President, slip into Wash- ington while that functionary was out on a fishing excursion, and in less than a week plunge the United States into a war with every country east of the third meridian. Worse even than that. The disappointed lover could have his features sculptured over in the cast of his successful rival, and marry the poor, deceived girl, while the fellow of her choice was being measured for his wedding clothes, Science is a good work-horse, but gets to interfering once in a while. THE SAME GIRL. HE sudden strain of an old refrain Will oftentimes reveal, ea flash at night, some previous plight— And this is the way I feel. Ages ago, I somehow know That I was a crocodile, And I frittered away the livelong day On the banks of the ancient Nile. And it seems that there, ‘neath the burn- ing glare Of the sun on its daily track, As L idly strayed, I was loved by a maid With a corrugated back. I died, and then, incarnate again, I passed to another life — In the form of an ape my brain took shape, And I lived with a chittering wife. In a later span I became a man, And a web of love I spun; Yet I feel it’s true that the girl I woo To-day, is the self-same one Who in ages past with my lot was cast, For I often hear her declare — As they have done since the world begun — “T haven't a thing to wear!” Tom Masson, comicbooks.com