Life, 1897-05-27 · page 30 of 32
Life — May 27, 1897 — page 30: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains a political cartoon and period advertisements. The main cartoon depicts a courtroom scene where a lawyer makes a motion and the judge dismissively tells him to skip the procedural theatrics and get to his actual plea—satirizing lawyers' tendency to engage in unnecessary legal formality and verbose motions rather than addressing substance. The surrounding advertisements are typical of early 20th-century products: Sozodont toothpaste, Rambler bicycles, and Beeman's pepsin gum. These ads emphasize dubious health claims common to the era (gum "cures indigestion," toothpaste "saves" teeth and breath). Below is a humorous anecdote contrasting a kindergarten teacher's idealism about children wanting to do things with a pragmatic mother's observation that children actually want to do *something else*—a jab at naive educational philosophy versus parental reality. The cartoonist is signed as Cesare Maccari.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Lawyer: Judge: I MAKE A MOTION, NEVER MIND ABOUT THE MOTIONS AND GO ON WITH YOUR PLEA, TH. BREATH TH POCKET A TRIAL WILL PROVE THIS TRUE. Sample for the postage, three cents. HALL & RUCKEL NEW YORK Proprietors LONDON : nae ina bicycle name-plate ? «= NOTHING but the guarantee it implies? THIS ONE “48 years’ ex- ‘ip he perience” and i RAMBLER BICY Popular list price 880 To EVERYBODY. Interesting Rambter Booklet—free. GORMULLY & JEFFERY MFG. CO. Chicago, Boston, W Brooklyn, Detroit, and London an BEEMAN’S THE ORIGINAL PEPSIN GUM Cures Indigestion and Sea-sickness. Atl Otbera are fzttatiens, “It is the nature of a child to be wanting to do something,” said the enthusiastic kindergartener. “*As far as I have noticed,” said the mother of six, ‘it is the nature of a child to be wanting to do something else,"—Cincinnati Enguirer,