Life, 1900-04-19 · page 8 of 20
Life — April 19, 1900 — page 8: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# "The Owl and the Boston Girl" This illustrated poem by Tom Mason depicts a humorous encounter between an owl and a Boston woman. The owl compliments the woman's beauty, but she dismissively insists she lacks beauty—her brain is her asset, not her appearance. The woman then leaves for bed, where she cries until morning, undermining her own argument about valuing intellect over looks. The satire targets Boston women (or educated women generally) of the era, mocking the contradiction between feminist intellectual aspirations and traditional vanity. The joke hinges on the woman's emotional reaction contradicting her rational self-presentation—a common satirical trope suggesting women's claims to pure intellectualism are hypocritical or superficial.
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*LIPE : The Owl and the Boston Girl. owl and a Boston girl met one day, With each in a framo of mind, Said tho owl, “It's my duty to say you'ro a beauty, But in truth Iam not so inclined, “Tis true in daylight I cannot see, But I know you're plain, Ha! Hat Your learned chatter is proof of this matter, And convinces me that you are.” “ What beauty lacks,” said the Boston girl, “ The brain, as you know, supplics; S72 And that is the reason, with mind quick V to soiz0 on, Your estimato of mo is wise.” Then sho walked away with air sorene, And went straight home to bed, Where, her wisdom scorning, she cried till morning At what the owl had said, Tom Masson, The American Theatre. HE American theatre is a building devoted to exhibitions of filth, folly, froth and frippery, under the direction of Hebrew foxes for the education of Gentile geese. American dramatic art under these conditions is simply a commercial phase of phle- batomy, minus Listerian precautions, The American theatre is syndicated, the drama sindccayed, the stock of both watered. What is needed is less water in the theatre, and more soap and water in thedrama. The syndicate is always Hebrew, with minor Hebrews in the box-office and press agency. The principal features of the rear rank of the chorus are also Hebrew; but relentless custom demands comeliness, or its substitute, in the front rank for Gentile and Philistine. The American dramatist, under Palestinean rule, is any old thing with a pen, an epidemic, and a box of carpenters tools. The company of the American theatre is*Gentile and hire- the syndicate demands face, figure, front, beauty, beef and brass in its artists; brains are not wanted, nor needed. When face and figure have given place to experience, and the rempant front has been supplemented by elocution, the Hebrew helots are ready for Art—that is to say, for Shakespeare. Sheridan and Dumas, with modern reconstruction. It is hard for a syndicate star to come down from Belasco and Fitch to Shakespeare and Sheridan, but necessity, like a boss made magistrate, knows no law, * . * HE World, the Fiesh and the Devil are the presiding geniuses of the Amcrican theatre. The Theatre of Filth runs to the half-world, the whole devil, and a flesh and blood not worth talking about; it goes in for frippery and lingerie, and is suggestive of easy street, easy morals, wine openers and corkers generally. It is patronized by other fellows’ wives and deacons in search of shocks. It is denounced by the church, defended by the bribes of Israel, and eschewed by healthy men and women, The Theatre of Froth is devoted to the drama of society— A REALISTIC PORTRAIT. society given over to the three geniuses, World, Flesh and Devil. Its adjuncts are frippery, frolic and functions not frappé; it is more millinery than moral, and remarkable for its latitude rather than its literature. The Theatre of Folly goes in for flesh and fleshings, beef, brass and beauty, with or without music ; it stands on its own legs ; gets local color from its press notices, and is naked and unashamed, . * * HE tree of the knowledge of good and evil blooms in fhe American theatre; its fruit is woman, advertised as a peach, and exhib- ited as the apple of the eye of the Mauager > with the Nose. By careful oriental pruning its good has been eliminated and its evil made odorous. The art of the sindecayed theatre is scenic and obscenic ; its ethics are paretics ; its heroines stretch from Utah to Bohemia ; its heroes are products of liquor and lewdness; its persiflage is anacreontic ; its humor is that rectified by sarsaparilla, The American theatre will touch perfection when some syndicate critic has dramatized a bubonic plague, This theatre has served one good purpose—it has allayed the fears of navigators and bacteriologists by setting up stations for the disposal of garbage to fat-witted Christians for good money. The syndicate theatre and its management bave done much to wean Americans from their traditional good feeling for the Empire of Russia, Why, with Siberia so handy, the Tsar should turn the enterprising Hebrew towards a friendly and healthy republic bas puzzled America and alienated Americans, Only the success of Zionism, with the return of the chosen people to Palestine, will render possible the restoration of the American theatre and drama to a condition when it will be possible to visit one without disinfectants and view the other without blushing. Joseph Smith. «¢ ZQIGHEAD seems to be very well satistied with his last novel.” “Of course. good thing even when it happens to be his own.” He is broad-minded enough to appreciate a comicbooks.com