Life, 1904-11-17 · page 17 of 24
Life — November 17, 1904 — page 17: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page from *Life* magazine contains two distinct satirical pieces: **Top Cartoon:** A rural farmer complains to an aesthete visitor about a scarecrow. The joke mocks pretentious urban intellectuals who romanticize primitive rural life. The farmer speaks in dialect ("WAL, I DUNNO"), while the visitor uses affected language about "aesthetic feeling." The punchline: the scarecrow (presumably placed by the aesthetic visitor) is so lifelike that it's actually *stopped* scaring crows—inverting the farmer's practical concerns against the visitor's artistic pretensions. **Literary Parody ("Why Is It Thusly?"):** This satirizes overwrought romantic fiction common in the era. The excerpts mock purple prose describing heroines with exaggerated physical details ("drooping eyelashes, fully three-quarters of an inch long"). The accompanying essay's final paragraph critiques women's contradictory expectations of husbands—wanting heroes to be pets, or pets to be heroes—a commentary on gender role confusion in contemporary marriage.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
“INDEED! LMAY COME HERE AS MUCH ASI PLE. 2 THEN THERE IS AN ASTHETIC FEELING EVEN IN THIS PRIMITIVE COMMUNITY.” “WAL, I DUNNO 'BAOUT THAT, BUT EZ I WAS GOIN’ TEM SAY, WHAT BETWEEN THET THING THAR AN' YOU HYAR, THAR AIN'T BEN A CROW IN THE PATCH SENCE YE STARTED THE PICTER.” smiled that we saw that about her we had never known before. Exuisir C. Janet's perfect figure was against the dark eastern was a slight flush on her cheeks that gave to her face an almost maddening touch of piquancy. She was of medium height, and yet, somehow, this did not strike one at first. She might have been, for aught we could say, either shorter or taller. Exuiir D. Ruth stood, her hands clasped, gaz- ing downward with drooping eyelashes, fully three-quarters of an inch long, to the marble terrace below. No one would have dreamed that this frail girl, so delicate, so ethereal, was capable of such passion And yet her young form shook, until the whole house responded to her convulsive sobs. Then, with a supreme effort, she conquered herself, and once again her face reigned passive. Exursit E, Ethel leaped lightly on her bronco. Her face was tanned with long exposure to the winds of Heaven. With a merry peal of laughter she dug the spurs into his flank, and, her golden hair flowing like a yellow stream, was off again before Jack had time to catch his breath. Tom Masson. Why Is It Thusly? OMEN are strange creatures. When they marry a hero, they want to make a pet of him, and when they marry a man who is fitted by nature to be nothing but a pet, they insist on his being a hero. A HOBBY OF HERS. comicbooks.com