Life — April 14, 1898 — page 15: what you’re looking at

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

*LIFE-: The Real Victim. UCH sympathy has been exert- ed on behalf of the slumbering householder who is suddenly awakened at dead of night by the unconventional burg- lar. Itis possible, how- ever, that this may be wrongly placed, Our real sympathy should gotothe burglar, Noth- ing is ever said about him, but, of the two, he is the more deserv- ing of pity, He is obliged to force his way into a strange house under cover of the darkness, and bas not even the satisfac- tion of turning on the gas. Groping about thus, with the feeble aid of a sulphur match—itself a source of the keenest suf- fering—he never knows what moment he may set off an alarm or be shot down in coll blood by the mistress, A well-stocked larder of homemade unmentionables means certain dyspep- sia, and to dine alone is a torment in itself, And in the end his reward may be a misfit overcoat, some inconsequential spoons, and a diamond such as are sold in department stores for two dollars and ninety- nine cents, AN OVERTURE BY A Puzzle. YOUNG mao must brains to get into so nowadays.” “But what would he do with themafter he got in?” Meanwhile. HE shops at this writing make their usual display of Easter wares. The new bonnets are as gay as usual; the new fabrics of the dry- goods houses are in all colors, us though it was an ordinary season. No house is making a specialty of mourning goods, nor seems to have prepared for x run on crépes and bombazines. A great many persons are uncasy, but if there are those who are quaking at the prospect of bereave- ment, their voices are not heard, Some persons scem to think that the army and the navy want war. The bet- ter opinion seems to be that they are neither for war nor against it, butare simply waiting orders, prepared for whatever comes. In both branches of the service appears the phenomenon that we sce every where: the older men think of the cost of war, the younger men of its excitements. The war spirit is very much a mattcrof age. Men who have given hostages to fortune are noteager for glory. They think more of duty and its demands. Naval officers who have wives and children will not complain if they miss the chance to test the efficiency of modem warships by actual experiment. Meanwhile the interest in food and clothing and money making is as lively as usual, and things go on just as if it were any other April, and nothing in particular was up. comicbooks.com