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Life, 1906-02-08 · page 22 of 24

Life — February 8, 1906 — page 22: what you’re looking at

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Life — February 8, 1906 — page 22: Life, 1906-02-08

What you’re looking at

This page contains a **Kodak camera advertisement** (left) and a **humorous short story** (right) titled "Warding Off a Gift." The story satirizes the obsessive homemaker culture of the era. Mr. Obed Farrar visits an old family friend to *request she stop sending his wife* a magazine called *The Homekeeper's Friend*. His complaint: the magazine's endless domestic advice tips have made his wife Mary Emma impossibly busy and neurotic. She constantly experiments with kitchen projects, preserve-making, laundry techniques, hair treatments, and household repairs—all inspired by the magazine's "Handy Helps" department. She repurposes trash, rewrites domestic routines monthly, and obsesses over trivial home improvements. Farrar's exasperation is the joke: the magazine meant to *help* homemakers has instead made domestic life chaotic and exhausting. The satire mocks both the prescriptive women's magazines of the era and the impossible standards they created for housewives, suggesting that "helpful" advice could become burdensome compulsion.

📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

There’s a world of Wi ) i delight in ey ordinary window Home Portraiture It is simpler than most people think. Beautiful results are obtained by the light of an ordinary window, or by flashlight. A portrait attachment, at fifty cents, adapts the small Kodak to the making of good-sized bust photographs. The simple methods are myade clear in: “Amateur Portraiture by Flashlight,’’ by Wm. S. Ritch, - ‘*Home Portraiture,’’ by F. M. Steadman, - - - - - ** Modern Way in Picture Making,’ contains full text of both of above, and special articles by the leading authorities, including Stieglitz, Eickemeyer, Dugmore, Demachy, etc. 200 pages, beautifully illustrated. Bound in cloth, The most clear, concise and comprehensive book ever published for the amateur, - eel - eee EASTMAN KODAK CO., All Kodak dealers or by mait. Rochester, N. Y., The Kodok City. Warding Off a Gift. R. OBED FARRAR had carefully writ ten on a slip of paper which he carried in his pocketbook the address of a person in Boston, and one day when he went to the city he made it a part of his business to call at the street and number indicated, and to talk with the old lady who lived there. “I'm going to ask you not to send my wife the Homeke 's Friend this year,” he said to the astonished old lady who received him 1 T'll explain to you just why.” I wish you would,” said Mrs. Farrar’s old school friend, gently, smiling at the weather beaten old man who had surprised her with call. “I thought it would have many. things to interest Mary Emma, as I've always called ” she added, apologetically said Mr, Farrar, with a des- That magazine's chuck-full of ideas that interest her—and she tries every one of ‘em. We haven't had the same thing used to raise our biscuits nor polish our stoves nor clear our coffee two months running since began to give her that magazine. “I can't. go into the kitchen morning or night that there isn’t something simmering on that stove and a number of other things dry ing on the window-sills. Sometimes they're for keeping out moths or ants or buffalo-bugs. sometimes they're for cleaning pots and ket tles or preserve jars, and sometimes they're for repairing old, china or removing ink or grease. “Our preserves have been put up in wat sugar, molasses and I don’t know but vinega There's not a day but I see Mary Emma with a thoughtful look on her face out in the wood shed, bent on making some new kind of a waste basket or a stool or an improvement of some sort. I can't throw away or destroy so much as a strip of shavings or a tinscan now but what she’s after me, saying that was just what the Homekeeper’s Friend had spoken of as being particularly useful. “Sometimes my clothes are hung out in the damp, and sometimes they're packed away in newspapers, according to.what the contribu- tors to the ‘Handy Helps’ department of that magazine have written. If I miss my collar buttons I know some woman out in Alaska has found a better place for ‘em to be kept. “Some months Mary Emma wears her hair down her back most all day to promote the growth, and other times she brushes it a hun dred strokes night and morning, and braids it tight as it'll go. There's weeks when she'll wear two veils, and weeks when she'll go out without so much as a handkerchief on her he: perate air, 1, And I saw by an announcement that was lying on her desk,” said Mr. Farrar, after a short pause for breath, “that the first three months of next year there's to_be a series of articles on ‘M. a Man Comfortable.” Now what I want to know is, will you send those publishers word to let Mary Emr subscription expire, or have I got to wayl; the mail the first of every month and h those magazines into the stove? For it’s got to be one or the other.”—Youth’s Companion. A Stone Jug of YOUNGER'S SCOTCH ALE anda Dozen Oysters make the best of luncheons.—Adv. rump drawe: § Henri comicbooks.com