Life, 1906-04-26 · page 5 of 24
Life — April 26, 1906 — page 5: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This satirical piece critiques the wealthy's patronage of charitable missions. The illustration shows a woman lecturing to a group of poor people in what appears to be a mission house (note signs reading "LET THERE BE LIGHT" and "PURE MISSION"). The title "Those Appropriate Mission Lectures" and the subtitle's quote—"And remember, you must never accept expensive presents from gentlemen"—suggest irony. The satire targets wealthy benefactors who impose moral lectures on the poor while themselves living luxuriously. The "En Avant" commentary mocks how the wealthy preach virtue and self-denial to those in poverty, while the rich enjoy comfort and excess. The joke: the hypocrisy of lecturing the disadvantaged about rejecting material goods when the lecturer represents an affluent class that benefits from inequality.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
THOSE APPROPRIATE MISSION LECTURES SAND REMPAMER, YOU MUST NEVER ACCEPT EXPENSIVE PRESENTS FROM. GENTLEMEN.” En Avant ‘ HAT we ne airships, but stockings that you could walk amile in without being cr and though will we Baltimore News you call for the best grade of stockings they are worn through the first time you put them on, if you go afoot. Nobody who is ‘Time was when everybody walked, anybody is expected to walk any more. Our fect are pretty much and thought it no disgrace hen _ useless to us, unless we are romantic girls and can enjoy sitting walking was only a degree slower on them. The tr ° ns have made walk than the quickest m - ing intolerably slow, and the airships, when they come, will tion, and by that token respectable. doubtless abolish it for good and all. And that is progress. The But who thinks of walking now ice which clamors for stockings that will wear, or shoes = ver If you go into a shoeshop where a e casy, isa voice out of the past, the echo of dead yles of fine footgear are offered, you won't find a shoe comicbooks.com