Life, 1898-03-31 · page 7 of 20
Life — March 31, 1898 — page 7: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# "A Gas-Lad Study" - Life Magazine Satire This page presents a poem titled "A Gas-Lad Study" by Oliver Herford, accompanied by two illustrations. The text is a fantastical, stream-of-consciousness narrative about daydreaming while staring at a gas lamp flame. The speaker imagines traveling to surreal landscapes—a "country of Invention" with artificial flowers and exotic plants. The left illustration shows a fashionable woman in a top hat admiring potted plants (likely palms), suggesting she's the "gas-lad" in a contemplative state. The right illustration depicts a dramatic forest scene with a ghost-like figure. The satire appears to mock aesthetic pretension and the fashionable preoccupation with exotic décor and artificial beauty among the upper classes, using the gas lamp's hypnotic effect as a metaphor for escapist fantasy.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
AS I sit, inanely staring In the Gas-log’s lambent flame, Far away my fancy’s faring To a land without a naine. To the country of Invention, Where I roam in ecstasy, Where all things are mere pretension, Nothing what it seems to be. Folded in a calm serevic, On a jute-bank I recline, Where, mid moss of hue arsenic, Millinery flowers entwine. Cambric blooms—glass-dew beshowered, Gay with colors aniline, Ever eagerly devoured Ry the mild, condensed milch kine. Now the scene idyllic changes From the meadows aniline, And my faltering faney ranges Down a dismal, deep decline, Scene of some age past upheaval, Where no foot of man has fared, To a Gas-log grove primeval. Where I tind me, mute, and scared Of—1I know not—Goblins, Banshees, And the ancient Gas-trees toss Gnarled and flickering giant branches, Hoary with asbestos moss. Now I come to where are waving Painted palms, precisely planned, Rearing trunks of cocoa shaving, By electric zephyrs fanned, Soothing ie with sound seraphic Till 1 sink into a swoon, Dreaming cincomatographic Dreams beneath an arc-light moon, Olirer Hergorn. comicbooks.com