Life, 1906-04-19 · page 7 of 28
Life — April 19, 1906 — page 7: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains three separate humor pieces: 1. **"Heavenly Maid"** (top): A satirical essay criticizing orchestral concerts as culturally pretentious but financially necessary for cities. The author argues symphonies bore general audiences yet remain status symbols. 2. **"Call Her 'Little Rhody'"** (middle): A political cartoon about a proposed Navy battleship named after Rhode Island. The accompanying dialogue jokes about the ship's name impressing foreign powers and representing American naval strength. 3. **"Different"** (bottom right): A brief comedic vignette where a man compliments a woman's changed demeanor, attributing it to her recent New York subway experience—satirizing the transformative (or corrupting) effect of urban life. The cartoons employ typical early-20th-century Life magazine humor: social commentary mixed with light domestic comedy.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Heavenly Maid SERIES of great concerts in Boston net a loss of $1,800. The Pittsburg Symphony Orches- tra falls behind its expenses in the sum of $40,000. In Chicago the fine organization founded and trained by Theodore Thomas is able to pay its way only with the bourgeois help “of rentals.” It is about so everywhere, and still the purveyors of music do not learn that ordinary mortals creep before they walk, and walk before they fly. Whatever symphonies may be to the adept, they are noise to the general, and only now and then some adventitious circumstance, some occa- sional fad or foible will put the general in the mind to pay out their good money to be bored. The music which hath charms to separate the savage from his coin is the music which he esteems as such, and with precisely that sort of thing will they have to begin who would lift him to higher levels. If his taste is crude, it will never be refined by instruction which goes over his head, to say nothing of his heart. As a people, we are not especially deficient in elementary sensibilities. We are rather promising raw ma- terial, in fact, but we are none the less raw. No potter expects to make Dresden porcelain by smearing paint and gold-leaf on even the finest clay while yet it lies in the pit. Call Her “Little Rhody” WASHIN people of Ne new twenty-thousand-ton, biggest-ever battleship named after their State they must speak up ‘ON dispatch says that if the York want the proposed Bully: WHAT'S THIS RACE-SUICIDE ANYWAY? Spaniel: 1 THINK IT HAS SOMETHING TO DO WITH DECREASING THE PUPPYLATION! BUSINESS, LIFE’S LITTLE QUESTIONS “DEAREST, DID YOU MAIL THOSE LETTERS FOR ME TO-DAY?” promptly to the President about it and see that proper representations are made to Congress. Very well, but we don't want it named after our State. The biggest- ever will doubtless be aground a good part of the time, and her mis- adventures might bother us. We favor calling the new ship “Little Rhody.” Then, when she goes far from home and sails the seven seas and gets aground in distant ports, the foreign devils who see her and read her name will conclude that we have bigger ships at home. The chief thing for which we build battleships is to impress the imagi- nations of foreigners. Name the new ship so as to make the deepest impression! Different HE lone man who sitting at the table of the small hotel rose gallantly as the head-waiter ushered the strange lady to. the seat opposite him. She bowed in acknowledgement of his extreme courtesy. They fell naturally into conversa- tion. “Tt is so refreshing,” she said sweetly, after the prelim s, ‘to see such old-fashioned gallantry as you have displayed.” “Indeed,” he replied, “it is second nature to me. I was brought up that way.” “Were you?” she asked in sur- prise. “How you have changed since the other day—when I met you in the New York Subway.” comicbooks.com