Life, 1903-12-24 · page 14 of 20
Life — December 24, 1903 — page 14: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This satirical article mocks married men's attempts at deception, presenting dishonesty as a necessary marital "skill." The piece argues that men should begin lying to wives early in marriage—ostensibly to spare their feelings—yet paradoxically claims wives always discover the truth eventually anyway. The humor targets male hypocrisy: men pride themselves on honesty but resort to lies when convenient (to attend clubs, go fishing, meet old friends). The text suggests women are naturally better deceivers, having practiced since courtship, while men blunder into deception unprepared. The accompanying illustrations reinforce this: a stalled motorcar scene depicts a flimsy excuse ("the motor is too hot"), and a separate panel shows a "watcher" confronting someone, likely catching a lie in progress. The satire reflects early 20th-century gender attitudes—mocking both male dishonesty and suggesting female cunning—while ultimately suggesting marital deception is inevitable and somewhat comic rather than genuinely harmful.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
-LIFE- married man. Old stagers do it by habit. But the young ones blunder and make mistakes. They should learn, in the first place, to cultivate not only the innocent, but the injured air. The innocent air is good to begin on, but if the wife's suspicions seem to be aroused, then the injured air should be brought into play. A man cannot begin too early to deceive his wife. If he should acquire the fatal habit of telling her tho truth, their whole future happiness might be menaced. Let him start in, in the first flush of his newly-married life, and he will never live to regret it. When he has lived with his wife for about fifty years, he will wake up some day to discover that, after all, he hasn't been deceiving her at all—that from his first lie she has been quite well aware of what bas been going on. This is why it isu’t wrong to deceive one’s wife. You can lie to others and they will sometimes believe you. If “WHAT ARE WE STOPPING FoR, JIMMIE?"* “WHY, YOU SEE, THR MOTOR IS $0 HOT DAT I CAN'T START AGAIN TILL IV COOLS OFF A LITTLE.” When You First Deceive Your Wife. T seems too bad that men should have so much conscience about first deceiving their wives, because an important and neces- sary step like this ought not only to be done as early as possible, but with as much skill as may be; and it isn’t always easy to exert the best skill when one is nervous about a matter of tactics. A man never begins to deceive his wife until the necessities of the case drive him into it. And it usually happens that the critical moment arrives unexpectedly and takes him unawares. He is unprepared, be- cause he is unfitted for the task. Women are not handicapped in this way. They begin to deceive their husbands long before the engagement—say the first time they meet. A man, however, blunders along until he is aroused into action by some unforeseen emergency. An old college chum arrives from out of town, and they must make a night of it together. There is a dinner on at the club; or he wants to go a-fish- ing. Most men, also, start with the idea that they will bluff it out. In their hearty, honest way they will tell the trath, no matter what the consequences are. By and by, how- ever, they begin to get tired. They find that “ telling the truth” leads to no end of trouble, and they resign them- selves to their fate. As a matter of fact, deceiving one’s wife in a genuine, honest, honorable way is one of the chief duties of a “WATCHER GOT IN THAT Bag?” comicbooks.com