Life — May 31, 1906 — page 13: what you’re looking at

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

-LIFE- 669 To Please the Girls F YOU would please a girl, obey is law: Whatever else you do, to all that she may say, Say nothing she must listen to. The Health Industry ATURE always seems to be preserving a balance of power. In order to offset the depletion of human lives by automo- biles, steam engines, steamboats and other inventive appli- ances, new apostles of health are arising on every side. Some of them give us health and religion together, put up in com- bination packages; othersassertthata judiciousand persistent upholstering of our bodies with muscles will do the trick; ile still others claim that through our minds alone can we hieve a permanent freedom. The Price of Peace varies from $1 a treatment to S1o an hour. Health is rapidly becoming a drug on the market. As a modem luxury it ought to be subjected to an Internal Revenue Asa new industry, health deserves more than a passing men- tion. Although yet in its infancy, it is already occupying so much of our attention that it seems not improbable it will soon require some sort of Government jurisdiction. The main difficulty at present is that no system of health lasts long enough to be of any permanent benefit. We take it up, become its enthusiastic advocate, hip, hip, hurrah about it to the skies, when suddenly some one finds it out, the reaction comes on, and we lapse into a worse condition than at first; for our faith has been shaken and it is so much harder to believe in the next one. What we really need is a system of health that shall deceive us permanently. We want to be able to take our friend aside and tell him that we have at last found a panacea for all ills, without the seerct sneaking consciousness that some poor fool will the next day blurt out the truth about it, and thus destroy all our illusion. We can stand the shock of being undeceived our- selves, but it hurts one’s pride to be found out by one’s friends. ‘all how y morning of our lives, clad only in a glad smile and a purple gloom,we sat under blue glass for hours in order that certain friendly unadulterated rays might be allowed to enter our system; and how, when we were almost well, some one discovered that the glass should have been green, not blue; how we relapsed immediately from our hothouse setting not only sadder and wiser, but a good deal poorer. At present Mental Science is having a run for its money. We believe to an extent in Mental Science. For one thing, it can be practised without detection. Then again we must confess that we like its apostles better. They are most of them simply lovely. We have been shut up in a dark closet with a moth-eaten Swami many a time, with our diamond ring tumed with.its face toward the wall, hoping he has not seen it, and wondering if our horoscope was on straight. We have in more Wi than one been bled by hard, cold, crucl, unmagnetic specialists whose only object in life appeared to be to collect as many of our vital organs as possible. We have been kneaded by osteopathy and snubbed by homeopathy, but, even at S1o an hour, commend us to the mental scientist. She is always a lovely lady in the prime of life, and although at one time a hopeless invalid—just before she discovered the secret of existence—she is now as plump as a partridge. With an eye that flashes lovingly into the innermost rec of your soul and a smile that makes you forget your extreme poverty, dressed in the height of fashion, she holds your hand in hers and tells you not to resist anything and you firmly resolve not to. Itis all, she declares, the mind. This being the case, we have only to surround ourselves with the proper mental condi- tions and everything will come our way. We have tried Mental Science for some time and we are obliged to confess that it works beautifully, that is, in every respect but one. It has never been able to supply us with a good cook. Many an hour, in the secret recesses of our cham- ber, we have relaxed ourselves utterly to every known vibra- tion in hopes that somewhere, out in space, we could make a connection that would give our kitchen the proper harmonic tone. But the wires have always been crossed. We have never dared to mention the subject to our Mental Science guardian. We noticed the last time we held her taper fingers in ours that they felt a little rough and we suspected that she herself had been washing dishes. But it would have been wrong in us to say so. There are some subjects too sacred to mention, Spoils RIGGS: I was crossing the Jersey meadows the other day in a large auto, when we were attacked by a band of mosquitoes. Griccs: Thursday morning, wasn’t it? how did you know? , on Thursday afternoon I saw them passing over Newark and some of them had goggles on.” Tom Masson. HE man who avoids debt doesn’t have to bother about avoiding creditors. SETTLED Mars (to Astronomer): yROVESSOR, LET ME DISPEL RIGHT NOW YOUR FRRONEOUS BELIEF THAT 1 AM INHARITED. comicbooks.com