Life, 1899-07-27 · page 7 of 20
Life — July 27, 1899 — page 7: what you’re looking at
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# The Boston Mind This page satirizes Boston intellectual culture. The article critiques Boston's reputation for superiority—describing how the city's educated class exhibits "ignorance, illiteracy, superstition" despite claims of enlightenment. The text dismisses Boston's religious intolerance and mocks its embrace of pseudoscience like phrenology and astrology. The cartoon shows a playwright waiting for an actor, with dialogue: "SHALL I WAIT UNTIL YOU READ MY PLAY?" / "CERTAINLY, TAKE A CHAIR" / "ABOUT HOW LONG WILL IT BE?" / "OH, ABOUT TWO YEARS." This joke satirizes Boston's notoriously slow, overly intellectual theater scene—suggesting that even reading a script takes years due to Bostonians' pretentious, laborious approach to culture and art.
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Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
The Boston Mind. OSTON, which is Massachusetts, scorns ignorance, illiteracy, superstition, ancient myths, and all those things that indicate minds dominated by bodies— the rule of the lesser and the lower over the greater and the higher. In othor and more strenuous days, she subdued and cradicated superstition and heterodoxy In simple but effective fashion, Undor her wiso and firm policy, witchcraft was dis- couraged and witches accorded fuuerval Yhonors; preachers of heterodoxy wero given free passes to the Providence Planta- tions with convincing, if unpleasant, pro- Miminaries; sexual unconventionality was not published in a vulgar, yellow press; it was simply {dentifled, and branded In churches; pragmatic wives wero ducked by irritated public opinion, water being estoomed, thon as now, sovereign remedy for garrulity, Boston progrossed through the centurte and to-day eho stands proud and dis senthrulied. Religion has been reflnod, atten *LIPE uated and cooled; a modified, subdued and respectable First Cause has been sub- stituted for a Deity who grated on Boston sensibilitios, Tne Bible is tolerated, but it has beon relegated to its placo behind the works of Emerson and his intellectual congeners. It was unfortunate for tho Biblo that it was written by foreigners, and that {t was so lacking in tact as to make choice and give preference to Jews and Jerusalem rather than to Bostonose and Boston, As tho Euglish, or rather the 67 and catarth alono defy tho Boston Mind, though a day must come when tho utter dopravity of beans and the East wind will bo conquored. Missuseddyism bas come to stay. ‘Tho thoughtloss and flippant scoffer rails at tho multiplicity of astrologers, sooth- sayors, palmists, clairvoyants, mediums and mabatmas in Boston, Poor and de- graded creature, still in the thrall of ancient suporstitions, he still believes in tho potency of policemen, advertising columns, Playwright: SHALL 1 WAIT UNTIL YOU READ MY PLAY? Manager: CERTAINLY. TAKE A CHAIR. ABOUT HOW LONG WILL IT BR?” “Ol, ABOUT TWO YEARS.” Anglo-Saxons, have all mundane rights in tho Bible, it is permitted in Boston; but. even such a virtuous and superior peoplo as the Old English aro not the Now Eng- land Medicine, with all its absurditios and suporstitions, is gradually being bauished from Boston; it has beon supplanted by the Boston Mind, When a Boston Mind is concentrated on measles, colic, yellow, scarlet, or other ailments of color, or on lungs, liver, and other refractory organs, there can be only one result. Dyspepsia stock exchanges and weather bureaus In seeking tho lost, learning the unknown, and probing the future, He is of the earth, earthy. Tho Bostonian knows; ho never wavers; ho is of tho cognosconti; ho bas mind to work with, and eschews matter. Does ho nood a copper mine? Tho astro- logical mind is projected into Michigan or Montana, and it {s found and floated. Has he lost a tabby? The gray matter of the soothsayer goos forth with tho unerring certainty of a bootjack, and the cat comes back. Is the fato of an epic, a spring poom