Life — December 27, 1900 — page 4: what you’re looking at

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

~~ re While there is Life there’s Hope. VOL. XXXVI. DEC. 27, 1900. 19 West Tairry-Finst St., New Yorks. A SOME mitlionsot Lire’s friends, old and new, W274 t have been so good during the twelve- month now closing, a) as to write letters to it, remonstrating with it upon vari- ous of its opinions, positions and utter- ances, chiding it for dullness, levity, untruth, ignorance and other details of folly, and—sometimes gently, some- times with execrations—urging upon it amendment of ways and stonter endeavors to be fit to live. To all theso friends Lire begs to offer the grateful assurance of its sincere thanks. _What is it, indeed, that they should be so mindful of it? What are its deserts that they should care to better them? What weight do its opinions carry that s0 many good people should wish’ to set them right? Merely to have ex- cited a solicitude so benevolent and far-reaching is something to rejoice in, if not with pride, at least with thank- ful attention. Lire is grateful to its friend who is ‘sick of its tedious articles and illustrations about the Philippines,” grateful to the “old friend’’ who complains of * this ex- treme rancour against all things Brit- ish,” grateful to Brown who would have it “learn the truth about Mr. Kruger before you praise him,” grate- ful to Miss Robinson who stops her subscription because ‘ Lirg has aban- doned the cause of liberty in the Philippines,’’ grateful to Jones of Chi- cago who finds it uninformed about Bryan and far too kind to him, grateful to Hopkins who exccrates its “weak surrender to that nauseous hypocrite McKinley,” and to Froth- ingham who cares to see no more of a journal that “wantonly derides a President who at all times does his best, and whose best is every time the best that. is practicable.’ To these friends, and to many hundred others, whose strictures it has incurred, Lire S LLPE makes its acknowledgments. The pains they have taken with it shall not be wasted. It is turning over a new leaf in honor of the new century. 3d d. ISCERNING and confessing the grave faults which have made its career for nearly twenty years so morti- fying to itself and so distressing to observers, it proposes in the future to say nothing, and to depict nothing, with which anyone can find any fault, and if by oversight it should say any- thing which fails ix any quarter to give complete satisfaction, it promises on receipt of notice to take it right back and make amends. It will not again censure any person who has any friends or praise anyone who has any enemies. In every fight it will in future take the part of the uppermost dog, unless, indeed, the under dog looks very determined, in which case it will mount the fence and wait. It will not gibe at the British, except just enough toshow its large and important Irish constituency that its heart beats as regularly for them as their numbers warrant. It will look upon the bright side of Tammany Hall and extol Mr. Croker’s simple piety and astonishing resolution, unless the Cits grow strong enough to make that course unsafe. The Boers being now nearly thrashed, it will speak of them invariably with the contempt they deserve, as being small and backward potatoes and too few in a hill. It will denounce the Filipinos as rascal rebels whose idea of self-government is leave to plunder. It will watch very carefully the situa- tion in Cuba, lying very low for the present and striving prayerfully to jump the way the cat does. The sub- ject of lynching negroes it will avoid altogether as one impossible to treat without offending prejudices which are doubtless in many cases war- rauted by conditions and facts imp sible to be realized by observers living in New York unless they spend the summer in town. The liquor ques- tion, too, it will treat with great delicacy, applauding the noble rage of the Prohibitionists, but deplor- ing that the force of habit and sinful inclination is all too likely in the future as in the past to frus- trate the complete realization of their hopes. In religion it will!try to steer a*prudent course somewhere between the Devil and the deep sea. Medicine it will try in future to regard as an exact, rather than an’ experimental science, and it will give the doctors as much credit as it can without exciting the epistolary wrath of the Christian Scientists, and the Christian Scientists as much toleration as is possible with- out risking expulsion from all the doc- tors’ offices. It will neither deride the rich nor flout the fashionable any more. All Americans living in London and all American families who have mado alliances with noble European fami- lies, will be in a particular degree the objects of its forbearance, and their names shall go on its free list whenever they send word that their money is used up. It will make no thoughtless or untimely jokes about anyone. All its gibes shall be deodorized, and its sar- casms shall be sterilized and sugar- coated. LiFe’s aim in the future shall be to please everybody, to be of every- one’s opinion on all subjects, and if pos- sible—and in so far as the mechanical exigencies of a weekly picture paper allow—to be so in good season if not beforehand. One lives but to learn, Not easily nor quickly, but with an- guish, and as the result of long expe- rience, Lire has become aware that on any question which has two sides both sides are unsafe, and he who would avoid obloquy must keep his ear to the ground, have his storm cellar handy, and practice agility in skipping into it. we oh CS I is cheering to realize that in all these sound and praiseworthy Twentieth Century resolutions Lire finds itself in the company of hundreds of its contemporaries. The gallant company of picture papers especially, whether they hail from Philadelphia or New York, seem all to be solicitous to cultivate the inoffensive arts, and desirous, of all things, to please, and to be of the same opinion as other folks. But Lire will beat them all, not because it is more clever than they, but because it has the help of such a corps of remonstrants as no other journal can depend on comicbooks.com