Life, 1898-06-09 · page 6 of 20
Life — June 9, 1898 — page 6: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Analysis of Life Magazine Page 482 The main cartoon depicts numerous figures crowded on a warship's bridge, captioned: "The Bridge of a Warship When All Our Contemporaries Are as Enterprising as Some of Them Claim to Be." This satirizes overcrowding and competitive ambition among contemporary figures—likely journalists, businessmen, or politicians of the era. The joke suggests that if everyone claimed to be as enterprising as certain prominent individuals, a warship's command structure would become comically overstaffed and dysfunctional. The accompanying text discusses Robert Herrick's novel "The Gospel of Freedom," analyzing themes of freedom, ambition, and personal conduct. The article critiques characters who are "too strenuous" and uses the narrative to comment on contemporary American attitudes toward success and self-improvement. The page satirizes both literary characters and real-world figures through their excessive self-promotion and competitive posturing.
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Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Freedom That Does Not heroine Liberate. HE kind of freedom that th T ts in Robert Herrick’s novel, “ The Gospel of Freedom” (Macmillan), is not of the pure! , matri- mony, Social power and opportunity have nothing to do with it. The trouble with Adela'seems to have been that the family brick business in St. Louis and her bus- band's Water Hoister Company in Chicago, though profitable in a worldly way, did not conduce to high artistic ideals, She mar- ried because her husband was a man of force and commercial ideas ; but the species of politics that is allied with business sue- cess in Illinois grated on her artistic nerves, So she left him and trotted around Eure pean art galleries with a cynical art critic who talked the most advanced lingo of the over-refined, that the art critic was all phrases and no heart, and she went to St. Louis to look after her fault-finding Philistine mother, This, being in the nature of the most disagreeable personal duty nearest at hand, is advanced as the only royal road to that self-abnegation which is the highest freedom—a gospel that has been pre from pulpits for nineteen hundred years. Sho discovered soon enough baek bed ALL OUI CONTEMPORARIES ARE AS ENTERPRISING AS SOME OF THES CLAIM To BE. BALD outline like this gives no idea of the subtleties of the story—for it is deft, knowing, and analytic to an es ordinary deg! Mr. Herrick has a pre- cision of phrase and keenness of diserimina- tion mental idiosynerasies that suggest tho work of Henry James be- fore he took his present extreme delight in following spider-webs into a labyrinth, Tho writing of “ The Gospel of Freedom” is, above all things, that of a careful crafts- man. It iscalculated to give other literary artisans a keener pleasure than the general reader. *“ How well he is doing it!” the fellow- worker will exclaim, “What disiag will bo tho verdict of the reader who is looking for amusement, One who does not take too seriously the personages in fiction will be apt to say that,though disagrecable, they aroamusing, and are viewed through a medium that is distinetly in assorting able people!” ized, . * . R. HERRICK can well reply to those who object that his people are tak- ing their lives too strenuously, that that is exactly what he was trying to depict. His whole story leads up to the futility of Adela's revolt against the obvious condi- tions of her own existence. The autbor has placed in contrast to her vain en- deavors the perfectiy natural and simple life of Miss Parker, who always does the obviously right thing for one in her envis ronment, That, at the last, she should marry a “municipal reformer,” leads to. doubts as to her unclouded future—for municipal reformers are given to gunning. for troublo in a pertinacious manner, . . . TT VHERE is no room for subtlety In Her-. I bert E. Hamblen’s “Tho General Manager's Story” (Macmillan), It is tho same sort of sled; arrative that mado bis reputation in “On Many Seas.” ‘These aro men’s stories of railroad life, Thoy have all the vividness of actual ex- periences, and are no doubt a gollocation of numerous real experiences into one man’s alleged career, It is the method of A realist in fiction applied, without con- scious art, by one who is a born teller of adventure: hammer Droch, HEN a man makes a dollar outside his regular income be feels that he can afford to spend two. Got Even. Burglars broke into.my wine cellar the other night and, drank up everything [ bad, Winks: Well, that was your revenge. ICKLE. ENIUS is the boss of circumstance ;, talent, the henchmag of success.