Life, 1904-05-12 · page 8 of 20
Life — May 12, 1904 — page 8: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This satirical cartoon titled "MORE THAN HE COULD STAND" depicts a man (identified as "Burglar" in the caption) arriving at a home where a woman holds a baby. The burglar appears distressed, asking the lady to give him "a little bromo-seltzer to settle my stomach" before he can proceed with his theft. The satire mocks excessive food consumption and digestive discomfort. The accompanying article discusses Mr. Fletcher's recommendation to restrict appetites and food intake. The joke suggests that even a criminal cannot stomach—literally—the overeating habits of the household, making digestive distress so universal that it affects everyone, regardless of social station or intent. The cartoon ridicules both overconsumption and the era's popular digestive remedies like Bromo-Seltzer.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Copyright, 1906. by Liye P MORE THAN HE COULO STAND. Burglar (coming out from he GET OUT OF MERE AN’ NOT TAKE eAlace) ER BLOOMIN' TING. entertain our friends, we instinctively set out to overfeed them, and give them somewhat too much to drink. Mr. letcher declares there is as much true joy in hot milk, and ce bread well chewed, in canvasback ducks and champagne, and every true epicure knows that there are ch nts of truth in his averment. The fun of eating does depend more on appetite than food, and one of the ways of having fun with the appetite is to discipline it. * « . ND yet such wholesale restriction of appetite as Mr. Fletcher recommends and Professor Chittenden finds wholesome will never befall in a rich community like in Americ induc ‘There are hosts of people who would be at a loss to know what to do with the time unless under stress of some special now give to eating unnecessary food and recover- If these people didn't eat too much, how ever could they put in their time? How dreadful they would be to live with! The frugal Asiatic is frugal, partly because he cannot afford to buy much food, and partly because he would rather hoard his from the effects of it. PARDON ME, LADY, BUT IF YOU WILL JUST GIVE ME A LITTLE BROMO-SELTZER TO SETTLE MY STOMACH, ULL money than fill his belly. But he has a better gift for loafing than we have, and having perhaps a more active imagination, he can better invite his soul. They say that Mr. Fletcher is a pretty large consumer of cigars. Does he not substitute that form of fuel for the other, and would not a marked restriction in the consumption of food in this country be accompanied by a marked increase in the con- sumption of tobacco and other substitutes for food? Most men whose labors are chiefly mental, and who smoke at all, would rather live on tobacco than food, if their health permitted it. . . * HAT vigor of mind and body can be maintained on very much less food than we Americans use is interesting and very useful. It makes poverty seem a more hopeful condi- tion, and thrift more practicable where ‘i wages are low. It is valuable news, too, = De, for persons who are overloading their ston s with bad results, and it makes the Meat Trust and other organizations for making food less attainable take on a complexion of benevolence which they comicbooks.com