Life, 1904-06-02 · page 19 of 50
Life — June 2, 1904 — page 19: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains three distinct elements: **"Sonnets of Schooldays"** (top left): A humorous poem in deliberately misspelled dialect about a visiting aunt. The joke is mercenary: the narrator's family hopes the aunt will leave them money ("she may leev sumthin wenn shee dize"), so they flatter her excessively. The satire mocks both family greed and insincere hospitality toward wealthy relatives. **Cartoon (bottom left)**: A brief exchange where "Ashaway" asks if "Cieverton" kissed Miss Pinkerly's face, and he responds he kissed "her complexion" instead. This is gentle mockery of awkward courtship etiquette and perhaps her poor skin. **"Poems" essay (right)**: A satirical definition of three types of poems. The piece mocks "magazine poems" as filler content that's too long for illustrations but too short to be stories, and jokes that women's fashion ("gowns") are as poetic as Walt Whitman, suggesting they're pretentious nonsense. The overall tone is light satirical commentary on social conventions and literary pretension.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Sonnets of Schooldays. SONNET OF THE VISITING AUNT AND THE “ poven,”” NN ower ant vizzets us pop sez i hope W } wont foarget sheez rich aan i sez nope. Ann thenn he sez uwanto rekolekt Shee may leev sumthin wenn shee dize, i speckt, Shee aint so much too look att butt uno Ure looks dont mater n uve gott the doe. So wenn she kum i kawld her ante deer Butt mi wot cloas shee hadd, shee lookt so kwear afit rite in her fase. pop took gs ann sez wi ant how yung u look. k her kote ann maw shee took her Ann sez wot a deer boy heez grone too bee Maw sez the deer boy koodunt hardly wate Too see u wenn he hurd his deer ant kait Woz kummin on a vizzet too us, mi Tnev 1 maw tel so bigg a li Thenn wi dou luv me so Ann i sez wi becuz uve gott the doe O mi shee gott up in ann offal huf Ann sez s s sheed stade thair long enuf tride to argew but shee sez no ruth awl fools ann childurn tel the trooth, Pop wuz redhedded wenn maw tolled him wot I sedd ann he sez thair umita gott Her muany wenn she dide butt now uve went Ann dun ital never gita sent. Its awlrite to luv peepul fur thair doe Butt goodnessakesalive dont tel um so. J. W. Foley, ASHAWAY. Did you kiss Miss Pinkerly’s face? Cieverton: Oh, no—her com- plesion. APOLLO STEDMAN AT THE FOUNTAIN OF PARNASSUS. SSS SSS SS OS SS SSS SSS SSS SOS SS Poems. OEMS are of three kinds: magazine poems, tone poems, nd gowns. agazine poems h distinct rafsons d'etre. There is cious idiocy seeking express Besides, stories is often too large for a tail- and too small for an illustration, whereupon it is a poe nothing ; and nothing, while it has its points of superiority, is typographically ineffective. A tone poem is the Pierian Spring escaping through a slide trombone, with any kind of at at S In the opinion of some sober critics, gewns are quite as dithyrambic in form as they would be Walt Whitman been a milliner. They follow no rule of construction further than that they look best on women who can least afford them. Poem was originally a Greck word, meaning merely a thing made. A thing made to order is a later significance, comicbooks.com