Life — February 28, 1907 — page 10: what you’re looking at

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

302 My Typographical Girl IKE. * * © her eyes are gleaming, How taper is her to my dreaming Of her could I withstand! ing, Her manner is quite — Without a Her figure is quite “smash She is my nonparcil In Love's tergiversation She plays a coquette’s part; In sweet ? She ever keeps my heart. 'Twould almost drive me frantic, Quite parenthetically, Some day if this Romane tic Maid set her Cap for me. ‘om Masson The Gentleman of the Old School HENEVER some public character, town celebrity or eccentric old bachelor dresses in archaic garb, prefer- ably in a blue coat with bob tails and brass buttons, and trousers cut with a circular saw, he is alluded to by the discerning and discriminating editor of the local paper asa Gentleman of the Old School. If he have the massive dignity and austerity of an imported butler, the mingled hauteur and benignity of a head waiter and the suavity and condescension Hs MAN WITHE EXCUSABLE SPLEEN, MAT TWH DOLLARS AN HOUR I'M NOT KEEN 1 pretaRr SPENT IN AIR A FLYING MACHINE.” * LIFE ° of a floorwalker, united with a ponderous Danicl Webster way of addressing his fellow-citizens, his niche in the Old School is secure; and should his esthetic and decorative genius impel him to add a rufiled shirt‘and a gold-headed cane to his antique equipment, small boys will view him with awe from afar and fine ladies will thrill under his expansive courtesy. When this impressive social figure flourishes a red bandanna and blows his nose with the vigor and resonance of a Sousa band trom- bone, even policemen will bow to him and the press quote with reverence his fabulous stories of rain-storms, snow-storms, hot waves and other meteorological phenom- ena of a misty past The Old School to which the Gentle- man belongs is very seldom indicated; it existed in some vague period anterior to the present. When men were models of courage and courtesy and women were brave and beautiful; an age when race suicide was unknown and heroes were as numerous and attractive as Boston pocts. From the frequent allusions to Sir Charles Grandison and Lord Chester- field the eighteenth century must have been this Age of Perfection, with a slight slop over into the early nineteenth. While the gentlemen of this golden age wore swords and small-clothes and wigs and coats of many colors, and the age must have looked like a magnified historical drama of the Frohman school, minus the nose and the box-office, it must be admitted the period had _ its drawbacks. Bathtubs and open plumb- ing did not disturb the domestic harmony of the age; pomades, powders and perfumes were popular since soap wa under suspicion; language and liquor were fiery and strong; medicine was as dogmatic and deadly as Christian Science; the sword was mightier than the pen; political plunder the privilege of polite society; patriots were proud to have a country to sell; Marl- borough made money and Pitt had his price; the popularity of foot-paddery and highway robbery made frenzied finance a nonessential; piracy was the hand- maid of commerce; and blows and boot- jacks were easier to collect than bills. was It wasa glo:iousage and one calculated to inspire the orator and poet and produce Gentlemen of the Old School Tt was an age devoid of flats, hygiene, “A STITCH IN TIME, SAVES NINE" (LIVES) reform, hot air and breakfast foods; an age when kings and nobles were not ashamed to belong to the Great Un- cd. When we sit in our steam- heated rooms in the nipping days of winter, bathed, barbered, befuddled and blas¢, reading in some glowing historical novel of the Good Old Days, we have , lucid intervals when we marvel how the heroic gentlemen of the golden age escaped pneumonia and delirium tre- mens; we question whether plain polite- ness and clean linen are less picturesque than fine manners and foul feathers; and 1 wonder vaguely when the eccentric Gentleman of the Old School we meet on the streets will be chased into a lunatic asylum by rude cops and un- sympathetic alienists. pyceoh, Synith Query Is there a man in this broad land Who never to a friend has said: “Old man, [have a remedy “That'll cure that cold in your head ?”” comicbooks.com