Life — March 12, 1908 — page 8: what you’re looking at

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

IDDLEBROOK, VA.: Editor Life—It is to be admitted, re- luctantly, that the first ending of “A Story with an Unsolved Problem,” published in Lire February 6—that one showing Vaine succumbing to the lure of popular success instead of flouting it and remaining in un- shaken constancy to the Ideal—is more in keeping with “the tendency of the times” we are so fond of lamenting about. Art for Art’s sake is the standard of a few strong souls, as it has been in every time, but unless these have been great and gifted and compelling enough to arrest a part of the unesthetic throng and create a follow- ing, they have been altruists or, more often, starvlings outside this throng of Philistinism from which, only, can recognition of a sub- stantial sort come. Usually, such are forced to take precarious refuge in the mongrel sort of Bohemianism which, in this country seems to shelter only the might-have-beens. and has-beens. For the artists, or those acclaimed as such, are, to-day, not sepa- rated from the social world—the world of Mammon—but are of it, and its under- standing is not of ideals but of success. Now, who that is not strong cnough to take the whole responsibility of, say, the reform of popular drama on his own shoul- ders and carry it to some semblance of advancement, can quite withstand the temp- tation of the guarantee of a pot kept boiling over and against the prospect of following, in comparative loneliness and obscurity, the An? Ideal of At? Tvregestep READER February 16, 1908. OZEM, MON Dear Life—I made a vow that if the last number of your paper had a single word about your twenty-fifth anniversary I would never buy it again, and lo and behold there was another of those hoary old chestnuts. I will give you one more chance and if I see any reference again I will quit and for good. How can you think that the public cares one atom what age you have attained ; all we want is live, fresh matter, wit and sar- casm, and humor, and pathos, but never a word of self-laudation. Don't you know that? Very truly yours, Q. Yes, we know that. But is it self-lau- dation when your friends say pleasant things about you? Must we toss into the waste basket all these hearty congratula- Se tions? No, we have not the heart. It is not vanity, Q, that we are displaying. You must not give up. D®® LIFE: Kindly permit an anti-vaccinationist to give to your recent correspondent the “reason for the faith that is in us,” and say —that we anti-vaccinationists are a con- sistent enemy of the same because we dread the baneful and often disastrous results of the practice, different (apparently irrele- vant) ailments developing as after-effects— poisoning of the blood, constitutional de- bility, and prolonged invalidism. We be- lieve that if the money that is annually spent on vaccination were applied to ridding the city of its thousands of cesspools, cleaning its streets and back yards, to proper disi fection and to the enforcement of all sani tary laws; and if the public were as thor- oughly drilled in the saving power of clean- liness, fresh air, pure food and the laws of health generally as they are in the alleged efficiency of putrid and diseased calf pus, smallpox would dic a natural death like the black plague (which at that time mysti- fied the world as a dispensation from an angered God) and other scourges of medie- val times which have yielded to simple sani- tary measures. Expert medical opinion is hopelessly divided upon every phase of the vaccination question, Our learned “authorities” seriously differ on every important point—such as the num- ber of marks necessary, the proper kind of lymph, the length of the period of “protec- tion,” and the value of revaccination. The vaccination superstition—as it seems to us—has been so thoroughly exploded, its claims and theories so completely demol- ished by many of the ablest scientific minds of the age, and its grave dangers so abun- dantly proved, that its legal enforcement, wherever attempt is made to enforce it, we hold to be a crime against PERSONAL LIBERTY. New York. K.G. EAR LIFE As an old friend I take the liberty to warn you against a free play of your con- victions. Convictions have no place in this sort of republic. Keep your ear alert to the pulse of the counting-room. Don’t reprint cuts from Wilshire's if you value your de- sirability as a citizen and your respectability a member of society as she is. You “lit ary fellows,” along with artists and scien- tists, appear to have a diabolical tendency to nonconformity. Shun it, shunt it, kill it. It leads far away from Easy Street. And you fellows love luxury. I used to spend two dollars and a half to five dollars per month on Socialism and literary luxury. Then I made a measly living. Now I'm a Government pauper and every ten cents for Lire “looks like thirty cents.”” But I can’t keep the ten cents in my pocket as long as Lire is in sight. I sometimes wish you would raise to fifty cents. That would be prohibitive to yours truly. If I were a Democrat (not a democratic Democrat, but a simple Democrat), I'd know that “Billie Brine” is the man to nominate, simply because the retainers of capitalism are almost unanimous in the assertion that he's the most unavailable candidate the Dems can take up. There’s pure reason enuf. You keep close to the shore of public opinion and don’t get careless. The “Gov- crment” might get hold of you. Yours f. t. ry OLD SotpiEr. From Mrs. Minnie Maddem Fiske ‘© THE EDITOR OF LIFE: Dear Sir—All honor to Lire on its twenty-fifth anniversary! It has long been the opinion of the writer that Lire is our representative American publication. Lire is always on the right side, on the humane side, on the enlightened side, on the decent side of every question. Above all, it has been our noblest champion of helpless dumb animals. Let us rejoice at this par- OFF FOR A MUCH-NEEDED REST comicbooks.com