Life, 1897-09-02 · page 3 of 20
Life — September 2, 1897 — page 3: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Analysis of Life Magazine Page 183 **Main Cartoon (top):** Shows two men confronting a third about smoking a cigar indoors. The caption reveals social friction over personal habits—one man claims the sanitary police visited due to the cigar smoke, suggesting early 20th-century public health concerns about indoor smoking and ventilation. **"A Case in Point":** A brief joke about whiskey weakening willpower, playing on temperance movement anxieties of the era. **"A Dainty Palette":** Satirizes artists' complaints about lacking luxuries while paradoxically needing expensive canvas—poking fun at bohemian pretensions. **"Beginning in Time":** References Professor Snowshoveler's Arctic expedition and the *Evening Post*'s locomotive engine using "bad language"—whimsical social commentary typical of Life's satirical humor targeting contemporary institutions and behaviors.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
‘“WERE THE SANITARY POLICE IN YOUR HOUSE THIS AFTERNOON ?"* “THEY WERE,” “WHAT WAS THE MATTER?" ‘1 WAS SMOKING THAT CIGAR YOU GAVE ME.” A (Case in Point. Beginning in Time. $7 WONDER if it’s true that whis- key weakens the will power.” SCIENTIFIC WRITER: I hear that Professor Snowshoveler is going to start for the North Pole. Epivor oF The Circulation Pusher: Then we must begin a subscription, “What for?” more Idrinkthe ato ind him.” more I am de- . termined never to stop.” HE Evening Post rails at Mr. Kipling for allowing a locomo- SSS tive engine to use bad language. A Dainty Palette. When machinery talks the Post ex- OR luxuries of every Pects it to talk nicely, but scoffers @, kind maintain that when money talks the No artist cares to lack, Post is on such a strain to catch the But, strange to say, he never drift of what is said, that it forgets to seems be hypercritical about rhetoric and To want his canvas back. grammar, THE MENAGERIE BY THF SEa.