Life, 1904-05-19 · page 9 of 28
Life — May 19, 1904 — page 9: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains a satirical illustration titled "At the Club: Entertaining the Distinguished Guest" showing what appears to be a formal dinner scene with exaggerated caricatured faces of men in formal wear seated at a table. Below is an essay by Tom Masson titled "Nature," discussing how urban people study nature indoors through books rather than experiencing it outdoors. The piece humorously advocates for accessible nature study—mentioning a "pussy-willow book" kept indoors and a system where people can "gambol all the year around" by paying installments to track flowers. The right side features botanical illustrations (a flowering plant and circular tree-ring diagram labeled "He centered his eye upon it"). **The satirical point:** The contrast between the formal, artificial dinner scene above and the essay below critiques how modern urban society has become disconnected from authentic nature, replacing it with mediated, commercialized substitutes.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
AT THE CLUB. ENTERTAINING THE DISTINGUISHED GUEST. Nature. NATURE. at one time—that is, in the barbarous days—was studied outdoors in the damp, unwholesome woods. Now it is studied under the evening lamp, from books provided by enterprising publishers, Nature, from being out in the open, is now tucked away in bookcases. Along about March, when natu- rally, if there was any we would begin tos al use in it, road, we get y-willow book and have it . The first faint breath of spring used to come over u: we tramped across the meadow. Now it is blown across the library table, as we sit in our Morris chair, almost smelling the natural- looking crocuses that peep from the down our pu served indoo! Isn't it grand to have so many willing workers gathering up nature for us in great typographical heaps, and shipping it direct to us on the instalment plan, right through the composing-room ? All we need now is a large red calen- dar and nature-books arranged by months, and we can gambol all the year around on the floor, without getting our feet w With a modern sy: ‘d indexes, we can keep track of ever ver as it comes out. Nature, in this way, comes on approval to‘anyone who can pay one dollar down, and fifty cents a month. Equipped thus we can roam the world at will, armed only with a traveling bookcase, and be able to keep fully in touch with all the flowers that bloom in the spring. Tom Masson, “Me CENTERED MIS EVE UPON US. comicbooks.com