Life — March 7, 1907 — page 23: what you’re looking at

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

WILLIAM PENN STARTS TO FOUND PHILADELPHIA aramels, drank hot water and went through’ motions, and though the to: bacco was drying out and_ getting lighter all the time, they were married at last and lived happily as long as they cared to. The ladies were frowsy frumps and vinegary, and they soon came to be called F. F. V's, for short, a designation which their descendants, with pardon- able pride, have retained. Being old skates, they knew just what to do when the colonists met them with a cert iciness, the better as they were in no sense cheap skates. The colonists expected, now that they were married, to have rather less trouble with the naked savages, but in this they were sorely disappointed. Alas! it is only too true that compassion is a stranger to the red man’s breast. As Others See Us “A ‘D do the Americans shine in their conversation?” asks the inter- viewer of the foreigner who has returned to his native land. Let me tell you,” replies the for- cigner. “In mixed company the ladies assemble on one side of the room and all talk at once about cooks and dresses, and the men assemble at the other side of the room and talk about automobiles and money.” ONTCLAIR, N. J. ‘Tue Eprtor or Lire: Dear Sir—Can’t you do a little better in answering your Dayton, Ohio, critic, in a recent number of Lirk? Tell him that Lire is the only humorous paper in the world that points the follies and sati the weaknesses of human nature without a sting in the cpigram or a mean thrust in the ‘Tell him reverence should be given only what is worthy reverence and that to reverence wealth and pretension clothed in sacred garments, fossilized traditions per- petuated to shicld cowardice, micaningless conventions that ma selfishness more comfortable, is to replace reverence for true religion by a vicious, time-serving servility more damning to the giver than to the recipient. Tell him that when Mammon poses as God it is time to drive the moncy: changers from the temple and not reverence them merely because they stand in sacred halls. Tell him the trouble with most Sun- day-schoo) literature is that it is full of lies and that hypocrisy is the one form of damnation from which there is no escape. Remind him that he who takes all phases of life on the same plane of seriousness spends all his ammunition on the unessential and is powerless and powderless when the great issue comes. Tell him it is as bad to take the light and insignificant things of life too 1s it is to treat the venerable with satire. serious 343 mockery, and remind him that, if the second vice ends in flippancy, the first leads to fanaticism. I might go on—but cnough! Tam with you, Epwarp Howarp Griccs. 17, 1907. January EW YORK, N. Y. Editor Life—What do you of your own knowledge know about Mrs. Eddy or Christian Science ?- Have you yourself care- fully read her writings? If you had you would not be in ignorance of the fact that she does not call herself “Mother” and has not done so at any time. Also that she quested her students to discontinue calling her “Mother” some years ago, and that they now call her “Leader.” Not that this. matters much, but it is a little fact which serves to indicate the quality of your animus, even if your style had not done this. J.RW. Ot AND, CAL. Epttor Lirr: Dear Sir—1 am using Lire in my work as a valuable medium for conveying IDEAS and an adjunct to Sacred Writ. “My work” is prison reform and personal teach- ing in the jails and penitentiaries—my im- mediate aim being toscatter ideas and stimu- late a search for Truth. My sense of hu- mor is sufficiently developed to realize that you can plant an idea more readily with a joke tied to its tail than any other way, with most people. Certainly, I have found it so with our younger brothers, the felons; noth- ing repels them so much as exhortation and arraignment, while nothing attracts so well as friendly discussion and laughter. If you are sanctimonious, they laugh af you; if you are merry and human, they laugh with you. And that brings them with you in other respects. Do you not think you could double the response to this order, and send one copy regularly to one of our large penitentiaries, where there are over 1,600 men, half of them hungry and thirsty for the bread of Life? (I did not aim at trying to be funny there, either.) The institution has a few maga- zines for their use, but there is not one avon edly humorous, and while some of them get a joke paper now and then, i is nearly al- ways of the cheap, tawdry order. I want to educate them up to an appreciation of the real thing. I have bought many copies of Lire and sent over there, and I’m told they are worn out before they return to the center of the Idea Bureau—who is C. D. Lowric— address, San Quentin, Cal. Hearten him up by a visit from LrrE weekly, can’t you? ‘Three other periodicals have generously re- sponded to a similar request from me, and so I am throwing out my tentacles. Yours very truly, February 7, 19¢7 LJ FERSON,