Life — March 7, 1907 — page 50: what you’re looking at

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

More Than Legal Purity Legal purity is one thing. Absolute purity is another. We demand of every tin of Franco- American Soups that leaves our kitchen absolute purity and perfection in every particular. Our friends insist that we have achieved it, and all whovisit our kitchen agree with them Visit us. Investigate our original methods. Send for illustrated booklet and learn why our soups have been thestandard for 20 years. 21 kinds sold by Grocers everywhere in Quart, Pint and Hall-Pint Tins. THE FRANCO-AMERICAN FOOD CO., JERSEY CITY HEIGHTS, N. J. TRADE MARK REGISTERED ANUFACTURERS, like people, start in a small way. Asit does not pay to advertise an article for the sake of selling it to you once, when an article is advertised it means that the maker of it has faith enough in his product to believe that a trial of it will make you a permanent customer, As it does not pay to advertise an article in periodicals of national circulation unless it is widely distributed, anything you see advertised in these papers you will find easy to get, if you try. When, therefore, you see a brand of goods advertised with us, it generally means that this brand has been on the market for some time, that the goods are made with all the economics possible to the large producer (and so can be sold cheap, quality considered), are already more or less established in public favor, are widely distributed, and that a responsible firm is willing to back their merit with its money. When, then, such a manufacturer spends his money to persuade you to try Ais goods, is it quite fair to let a dealer when you ask for them substitute others ? If you agree with us, get what you ask for—the thing you have every reason to believe has exceptional merit. Your dealer will gladly supply you if you insist. LIFE PUBLISHING COMPANY 17 West Thiny-first Street, New York City St. Anthony HE. press dispatches published in the Boston dailies stated that “the invitation extended to Anthony Comstock, the purity mentor of New York, to address the Pennsylvania Congress of Mothers at Johnstown on November first has been recalled.” One of the prominent members is quoted as saying: “I myself have pictures and statuary in my home which are perfectly Leauti- ful and which I know Mr. Comstock would de- stroy if he could.” It would seem from the above that the more thoughtful and healthily moral members of the Mothers’ Association have no sympathy with prurient imaginations that see impurity and evil in things that to a healthy or normal mind suggest not only naught that is low or debasing, but that which is beautiful, pure and fine. Now it may not be the case that Anthony Com- stock has searched so long for that which is sen- sual, low or corrupt that his mind has reached the stage of the person who looks at the world through green glass. . . . Many of his acts of late years suggest the possibility of this state, or else that he is of that order of mind that so fears the power of evil over good that he believes that igno- rance is the only helmet for virtue; that innocence born of ignorance is a better safeguard for our young men and women from the multitudinous. pitfalls of civilized life than knowledge imparted by high-minded men and women with a view to making the young morally strong through knowledge coupled with appeals to the reason to think fundamentally, sanely and normally. There was a time in the far-away past when minds of this order, that seemed to endow evil, and especially sensualism, with infinite potency, so distrusted the power of righteousness and vi tue over their own minds that they fled to the deserts and to retreats, that their eyes might not even be tempted by the t of women, Now for such persons it may be that the retreat or the rt_is the healthiest place; but certainly, men who so exalt the potency of evil, and especially of sensualism, that they sce grossness and vileness in the breathing statues that represent some of the noblest creations of genius of the ages should not be encouraged to pose as censors of morals, as they would inevitably teach the immature and | unformed imagination of youth to look for things | evil and degrading or sensual in nature and art in- stead of seeing beauty, nobility and purity, which the sane, healthy, artistic and informed mind sees in the master creations of the ages. To us it seems that a mind so keen to scent out corruption and immorality where minds like that of Ralph Waldo Emerson would see only beauty, and so indiscriminate in its attacks on the good as well as the evil as is Mr. Comstock, is liable to ; work a vast amount of evil to the young and to jthe public imagination as a whole by centering the attention of people on evil rather than good, making them look for that which is debasing when ¢ none of these things. FF. contained an admirable cartoon which hits off what many people believe to be Mr. Comstock’s mental attitude. This car- toon represents Mr. Comstock as an angel flying to the gates of heaven, but St. Peter sternly for- | bids his entrance, saying, ‘No, Anthony, no; we may have things here you would object to.”— Trenton Leader. comicbooks.com