Life, 1907-05-09 · page 17 of 24
Life — May 9, 1907 — page 17: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains two humorous pieces from *Life*, the American satirical magazine. **"How Fido Got Indigestion"** (top): A visual gag about a woman feigning illness to avoid horseback riding, instructing her servant to feed her dog cake and jam—then revealing the "doctor" summoned is actually a veterinarian, making the servant's actions a cruel prank on the animal. **"Where We Shine"** (left column): Mocks American materialism by contrasting European and American attitudes toward wealth. A Frenchman's nine-million-franc estate causes national celebration in France, whereas America treats such sums as trivial—suggesting Americans' obsessive money-acquisition makes them culturally inferior despite financial superiority. **"William the Silent"** (right column): Defends placing a statue of William of Orange (Dutch Prince who opposed Spanish rule) in New York, arguing it benefited America by preventing Spanish conquest that would have overcrowded colonial ships and eliminated American independence. The satire humorously traces American identity back to this historical figure.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
HOW FIDO GOT INDIGESTION “TCAN’T RIDE. I'M ILL. I'VE SENT FOR A DOCTOR.” “NOT THAT HANDSOME “YES. HE'S COMING DIRECTL’ XE FRED POINTED OUT TO US YESTERDAY?” “THEN YOU JUST TEAR INTO YOUR CLOTHES AND FEED FIDO ALL THE CAKE AND JAM HE'LL EAT. That doctor's a veterinary.” Where We Shine ZION OME Frenchman has lately died and (Gas fS) left an estate of nine millions, and My7oxne' all France is cackling over it in the most amusing as if it were something great. With us, of course, an estate of nine millions would hardly get a man’s name mentioned in the dis- patches, unless it should take place very opportunely, indeed, some day when there was neither a holocaust on the speak of in New York nor promi- nent citizens getting themselves called ¢. by their rightnames by the President. It shows how utterly we beat the world at acquiring money. Can we not well afford to be mag- nanimous and let them beat us at pretty much everything else? William the Silent THE propriety of having the proposed statue of William the Silent stand in New York is not to be gainsaid. For Will- iam the Silent was not William Penn, as some, misled by the silence of Philadelphia, which Penn founded, would have us believe, but that Prince of Orange who whipped the cruel Duke of Alva. The statue belongs in New York. The whole nation is the beneficiary of his work. If the arms of Spain had prevailed, what must have been the result? Well, for one thing, so many more ancestors would have had to come over in the Mayflower as could hardly have failed to swamp that historic craft, already loaded to its utmost capacity, and spoiled everything. What patriotic imagination does not recoil from the contemplation of such a contingency, with no Bunker Hill possible, except as the Indians should be induced to tum out and fight it; no Concord philosophy either forming or cutting much ice, and, last but not least, the Parker House roll marooned among the saddest words of tongue or pen? comicbooks.com