Life — October 29, 1908 — page 9: what you’re looking at

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

“LIFE: 459 O very many people, privacy is a sweet and precious condition, not to be forfeited without pangs. Such people, if they give it up, do so only under strong pressure of need, ambition cr duty, and even then spare no more of it than their need or their purpose compels. English dwellings, with high walls around their acent gardens, attest the prevalence in that island of the idea that it is a luxury to live out of sight of the passing crowd. In our land the outward evidences of that feeling have never been so noticeable, but even we have window shades and blinds and front doors, and provide for seclusion when we want it. How much of it we want, and how much we want it, is partly a matter of individual training and tem- perament, but largely of the manners and customs of the society we live in. Sometimes it seems as if the minimum of privacy was enough for us Americans, especially in the cities. It is true that, in spite of the current popularity of Japanese example, we still shut the door when we take a bath, but in the street cars we are wonderfully jumbled up together, and rather a large proportion of our city population lives in hotels. Both of these phenomena, however, betoken with more cer- tainty what we get than what we want. And it is true that most people who can afford to have their choice prefer cabs to the street cars, and their own houses to hotels. Along wit! increased command of money there seems to come increasins appreciation of privacy. The larger our incomes are, and the more we can indulge ourselves, the more we tend to so much of exclusiveness as consists in shutting out the crowd. Per- haps the English have been more private in their dwellings than the Americans because, being richer, they could better afford to be. Perhaps the Americans will come to shut them- selves in more as they are better able to afford it Most luxuries are helpful and useful up to a certain point, and hurtful beyond it. No doubt it is so as to this luxury of privacy. One may grow better for having enough of it, and be stunted in development by being able to command too much. A New Being AS anyone noticed the universal habit that chauffeurs have of sliding back in the seat, so that their heads are on a level with their knees? As the number of chauffeurs is con- stantly increasing, and as they are all set in this manner, in a few generations a new being will result; one who will have rudiments of legs (souvenirs of the past) dd who will have to be lifted in and out of his car with pulleys, or some new portable device invented for the purpose, and attached to the engine. This creature (chauffeurus gasolinus) will become valued according 10 points. If his back describes a true parabolic curve, his head is bent forward at an angle of 45 degrees, his chin rests on his clavicle, and his right arm is hung at such an angle that he can move the gears without raising his e) lids, he will be of the thoroughbred type, accompanied by a framed pedigree in three colors. HN DESIGN FOR A HALL LAMP IN BACHELORS’ APARTMENT MOUSE