Life, 1897-07-15 · page 15 of 20
Life — July 15, 1897 — page 15: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page satirizes wealthy tourists and artistic/literary types who summered in New England resort areas. The top cartoon jokes about ancestral pride: one figure boasts his father won a prize; the other counters that his mother's remains won a medal at a "health food fair"—mocking pretentious genealogy claims. The main text mocks Boston poets and literati infesting places like the Isle of Shoals, where they torment visitors with amateur compositions and personal stories. It describes how summer tourism has become so problematic that New Hampshire passed laws restricting literary figures' visits. The piece also satirizes wealthy "fat exiles" from New York who visit mountain resorts, get fleeced by locals, and return home poorer. The cartoon "Keep Your Eye on the Ball" depicts a tourist (elephant-headed figure, unclear significance) with a local character, likely illustrating the predatory relationship between native con-artists and gullible visitors. The final cartoon about "dressmakers' dummies" likely comments on tourists as empty-headed, superficial targets.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
PRIDE OF ANCESTRY. : MY FATHER TOOK THE FIRST PRIZE THAT'S NOTHING. MY MOTHER'S EMAINS TOOK A GOLD MEDAL AT THE HEALTH FOOD FAIR] piazzas, and are fed on spring water and scenery. They seldom speak; they smoke cigars and look opulent; they glare at the hills, and hunger for the blood of women and children who romp on verandas. They return to conscious life three times a day, when the clangor of a bell announces the hour of indigestion, and they are led by attendants into a vast chamber where archaic victuals are exhibited by white-robed :maid- ens. Birch-bark artists, photograph fiends and buckboard pirates league with the lord of the castle to loot the fat exiles, who are finally sent back to New York leaner in person and pocket than when they came. “KEEP YOUR EYE ON THE BALL.” HE Isle of Shoals has its special horrors. This fatal spot is the summer lair of Boston poets and litterateurs, who torture the victim with original compositions by day and personal reminiscences by night. The steamers from these islands are met at the wharf by commissioners in lunacy, for the guests are good for one trip only. One summer a Kansas poet turned up there, but. the mortality was so great thata special law was passed prohibiting the entrance of all trans-Mississippi litterateurs, and limiting the stay of Chicago laureates to three hours. McClure tried to buy the islands for the purpose of acclimating imported authors; but New Hampshire shied at a syndicate, believing that modern Scotch and English methods of literary torture might destroy an American industry. A prohibitory law was passed by the mountaineers, which was designed to snare the seekers after scenery, and to add another means of plunder to the well- equipped native. It has decreased the quality, not the quantity of liquor consumed. A tourist who travels with a gun, and a constitution inured to peril and hardship, may by prudence and self-denial be able to hold on to enough cash to escape from New Hampshire with his clothes; but it is wise to travel in troops, as do explorers in Africa, and to remember that the law is made for the native, not for the curious BUT DRESSMAKERS’ DUMMIES DON'T SHED TEARS, tourist. Joseph Smith,