Life, 1906-09-06 · page 26 of 40
Life — September 6, 1906 — page 26: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This *Life* magazine page contains several satirical pieces mocking contemporary society: **"Sorrows of a Newport Reader"**: Satirizes Henry James's notoriously obscure, dense prose style. A Newport resident complains he couldn't understand James's magazine article about revisiting America despite hours of effort—a joke about James's impenetrable writing that requires exhausting labor to parse. **Bar/Social Sketches**: Brief comedic dialogues mocking the wealthy and pretentious (an ice magnate claiming to have no friends; someone worried about lost baggage). **"Pluto and Charon" Cartoon**: References Greek mythology but updates it with modern satire—Charon (the ferryman of the dead) complains that "progressive New Yorkers" have disrupted his ancient business by tunneling under the River Styx and running frequent transport services. This likely mocks subway expansion or modern infrastructure disrupting tradition. **"Song of a Balloon"**: Light verse celebrating hot air balloons as fashionable entertainment while joking they're immune to traffic laws and accidents. The overall tone mocks intellectual pretension, wealth, and modern progress disrupting traditional ways.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
262 Sorrows of a Newport Reader NEWPORT correspondent writes to the Evening Post that having known Mr. Henry James since he was a child, and his father before him, he longed to know what he would think of the modern Newport and the changes there. With kindling anticipations he approached Mr. James’s recent magazine article on that subject. But, alas! he could not tell what Mr. James thought or felt. “Hours,” he says, ‘were not at my disposal, but, finding that delving was needed, I delved, for awhile—then had to leave the library; and I didn’t and don’t actually know that Mr. James felt anything at all, that he even saw what he must have seen. Now, wasn’t that a trial? and all Henry James’s fault!” It was a trial and one in which this lamenter will have a thousand sym- pathizers. We have been sure ever since Mr. James began to print his thoughts about the revisited land of his nativity that there must be valuable and edifying reflections among them if only one could *LIFE yank them out of the literary quicksands in which he left them. But that cannot be done. We have not heard of any one who has done it, though several months ago a man in Philadelphia published his determination to try. BAss TELLER: I have no doubt you are Billyuns, the ice magnate, but you must be identified. Can’t you bring in some friend to— Bittyuns: I have no friends! “It’s all right. You're identified!” RIGGS (who has taken the pre- caution to carry his own dress-suit case across New York, to his jriend Griggs, who hasn't): Have you any idea where your baggage is? Griccs: Dodd only knows! “you entertain a great deal more than you did formerly, I notice.” “Yes, indeed. This is the first really hospitable cook we ever had.” Pluto: WMAT'S THE MATTER, CHARON? YOU LOOK TROUBLED. “MY BUSINESS HAS BEEN KILLED BY SOME OF THOSE PROGRESSIVE NEW YORKERS WHO HAVE DUG A TUNNEL UNDER THE STYX AND ARE NOW RUNNING UNPOESERS FVERY TWO MINITES.” Song of a Balloon I’m getting now to be the style, and, filled with dollar gas, far up above the crowds I smile at earthly things I pass. Nobody may run over me nor mangle me, indeed ; and there's no limit, you'll agree, to my aerial speed. With every current I may glide, nor do I turn quite pale; if eighty miles an hour I ride they can't put me in jail! Indced, I am a swell affair, a rounder, you'll agree; and autos, as I sail the air, must all look up to me. At times Thave a lot of sand, I'm full with such a load. The only oath that I command is this: “Well I'll be blowed!” High O! I sail in lordly state across the checkered sky. I do not even have to wait until the clouds roll by ! comicbooks.com