Life, 1908-07-02 · page 23 of 40
Life — July 2, 1908 — page 23: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This Life magazine page contains two distinct items: **Top Cartoon:** "America Expects Every Girl to Do Her Duty" depicts women operating an enormous telescope or cannon-like device, with a man peering through it. The caption plays on the famous WWI British recruitment slogan ("England Expects Every Man to Do His Duty"). The satire appears to mock gender roles and women's expanding public participation—likely commenting on the suffrage movement or changing social expectations for women around this era. **Book Reviews:** The text critiques three contemporary humorous books, arguing they're inferior to serious literature. It discusses their styles and merit, comparing American humorists unfavorably to British ones. **"A Hot Jew Lie":** A brief ethnic joke featuring a character speaking in exaggerated Yiddish-accented English, claiming heat from weather set fire to his store. This reflects the casual antisemitic humor that was normalized in early 20th-century American publications. The page reflects period attitudes toward women's roles, literary taste, and ethnic stereotyping common to the era.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
AMERICA EXPECTS EVERY GIRL TO DO HER DUTY Three Books 'HREE books at hand illustrate the in- feriority of works avowedly comic when compared with the intermittent humor of our more serious writers. These things are to some extent matters of taste and temper- ament; but personally we got more enjoy- ment from Professor Lounsbury’s “Usage in English” than we managed to extract from Robert W. Chambers’s extravagant ex- ploit, “Some Ladies in Haste” (Appletons), Ellis Parker Butler’s whimsy, ‘The Cheer- ful Smugglers” (The Century Company), or Sewell Ford’s collection of slangy uninvitingly entitled “Side-Stepping with Shorty.” In “Tole” Mr. Chambers gave play to a capricious fancy, edged with the tools of satiric art. It indicated possibili- tics of what might happen did he elect to eschew the novel of serious purpose for the tale of frivolous design. ‘Some Ladies in Haste” lacks the substance of those visions which many literary workers evoke in a cloud of tobacco smoke. It is as if the author had loaded his pipe with sweet- scented soapsuds and blown a series of bub- bles instead. The reflections and the fancy thus begot take the form of a polite parody on “mental science” methods, amorously exercised, which may safely be recom- mended to the Very Young Person too old to be tickled with a straw. Mr. Ford’s “Shorty” is likened by the London Standard to Dooley and Mark Twain. But Shorty has a style of his own that rather sugg.sts to us the amazing lan- guage of the gentlemen who preside over the sporting departments of certain evening newspapers: “Notice any gold dust on my back? No? Well, it's a wonder there ain't, for I’ve been up against the money bags so close I expect you can find cagle prints all over me.” It may be that an American Goncourt, substituting a phono- graph for an opera glass, would gather just such impressions as these, It may be that “Shorty” represents “the typical Ameri- can’s idea of wit and genuine fun.” But what would the Standard say if we regarded Chevalier rather than Kipling as typical of the British idea? Mr. Butler is the humorist of our “middle class.” His people are the every-day peo- ple of our metropolitan suburbs. “Pigs Is Pigs” was an interesting example of how much more profitable it is to sell a broadly humorous anecdote toa book publisher than to a Sunday newspaper. ‘The Cheerful Smugglers” has at least the merit of being unpretentiously entertaining, and of resting its fabric of fun on a tangible foundation of human nature. Its wit is neither as deep as a well nor as wide as a church door; but the hammocks are swinging, and ’twill serve. W.T.L. Give Them Bryan if They Want Him “NR. BRYAN,” said Mr. Watterson, will be nominated by acclamation at Denver on the first and only ballot.”’ We wouldn’t wonder. If two-thirds of the Democrats want him, he is the man they ought to have. If he in- sists upon dying in the last ditch, he ought tobe gratified. A wilful man must have his way and a wilful party the same. Get the ditch ready, then, and saddle the donkey and give Colonel Bryan a hand up. It will be a painful cure, but it looks as though the case would admit of no other. HERE ate as many sunsets as there are people looking at them. A HOT JEW UE “SO HELLUP ME, DER VETHER VAS SO HOT IT SET FIRE TO DER STORE.” comicbooks.com