Life, 1899-08-10 · page 12 of 20
Life — August 10, 1899 — page 12: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Analysis of Life Magazine Page 112 This page contains an essay titled "For Authors, Old and Young" discussing literary success and public taste. The left column features an illustration of a monkey at a desk with books, a visual metaphor for aspiring writers. The main illustration depicts a domestic scene: a woman in a patterned dress stands before a man in formal attire (top hat and coat) in what appears to be a bedroom. The caption reads: "I THOUGHT YOU TOLD ME YOU WERE WELL OFF BEFORE YOU MARRIED ME!" / "I AM SURE OF IT NOW, MY DEAR!" This is a marital satire joke about financial deception. The woman believed her husband was wealthy before marriage but has discovered otherwise. His response—claiming he's now "sure of it"—suggests he's become impoverished through the marriage, likely through her spending. The cartoon mocks both marital financial disputes and pre-marital misrepresentation common in early 20th-century social commentary.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
412 For Authors, Old and Young. UTHORS and publish- ers of experience know their business to be a game of chance. All ad- mit, however, that merit in a volume is of some impor- tance. So is the cover and all the adver- tising. Butthe thing no man => “can count on is the public. This public is ever ready, at shortest notice, fora gush of enthusiasm over matter in which the author takes little pride. and which he knows to be inferior. And the same public is equally ready to turn its freezing shoulder upon what- ever comes its way—bad, good, orbetter. From the letters of Stevenson. in the August Scribner's we quote a few lines on this fateful subject: That is the bard part of literature, You aim high, and you take longer over your work, and it will not be so successful as if ou had aimed low and rushedit. 2. know that yood work sometimes hits; but, with hand on my heart, I think it is by anaccident, And I know’ also. that ood work must succeed at last; but flutes not the doing of the public; they are only Shamed into silence or affectation, [do not write for the public; I do write for money, a nobler deity; and most of all for myseif, not perhaps any more noble, but both more intelligent and nearer home, Young authors may take their choice as to whut style of moral should be drawa from this We venture to assert, however, and with no desire to be im- pertinent, that the very best an author can do will be none too good either for the public or for himself. ee HAT makes seven you owe me,” said the Cadi, removing his hand from a gold sequin which lay on the carpet of justicealongside of another which Mustapha had placed there, “Six, your highness, may it please the Prophet,” replied Mustapha. “TI said seven,” remarked the Cadi, “THOUGHT YOU TOLD ME YOU WERE WELL OFF BEFORE YOU MARRIED ME?” “1 AM SURE OF IT NOW, MY DEAR!” comicbooks.com