Life, 1908-11-12 · page 8 of 24
Life — November 12, 1908 — page 8: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains three satirical pieces about early 20th-century American life: 1. **"On a Whaling Trip with Father"** (top left): A sketch mocking father-child outings, likely commenting on class leisure activities. 2. **"Fatlet's Soliloquy"** (center): A lengthy poem satirizing women's fashion constraints—corsets, tight sleeves, and beauty standards that restrict movement and breathing. The speaker laments how fashion demands bodily suffering for appearance. 3. **"I'd Rather Be Wright Than President"** (top right): A photograph showing an airplane flying over the White House, referencing the Wright Brothers' aviation achievements as more impressive than presidential accomplishments. 4. **"Hirom Bug"** (bottom): A cartoon about automobile sightseeing, likely satirizing new automotive tourism culture. The page criticizes fashion excess, celebrates technological progress, and mocks contemporary American social pretensions.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
ON A WHALING TRIP WITH FATHER Fatlet’s Soliloquy Hips must go.—Fashion Note. Mrs. White adjusted the corset with a few deft movements and presto!—the model was hipless—News Item. 0 lace, or not to lace, that is the question : | Whether ‘tis nobler in the flesh to suffer The pinch and squeezing of outrageous fashion Or sit down upon this dire announcement And, by opposing, end it? To gasp, to pant No more, and being fat, to say we end The heartache and the thousand natural shocks The flesh is heir to,—'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished. To tug, to pull, To squeeze, perchance to pinch! Aye, there’s the rub! For in this chase of style what frets must come Ere we may nullify this mortal flesh Must give us pause. There's the tight sleeves That make calamity of reaching up; For who would bear the grip of bone and steel, The stifling steam within the Turkish bath, The rubbing of masseurs, the gulping down Of powders and of pills of anti-fat, The shunning sweets and farinaccous food, When she herself might her contentment make In a loose wrapper? Who would corsets wear That neither let her walk nor stand nor sit, But that the dread of being out of style, That bridge-whistless existence, from whose bourne No traveler returns, puzzles the will And makes us rather bear the ills we must Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus fashion doth make cowards of us all And thus the native girth and size and plumpness Is skinned o'er with bands of crushing grip, And lose the name of fatness. Easy, now, My good dressmaker! Nymph, in my directoire Be all my fat forgotten! YCURGUS arranged with the Spartans that the laws he made were to be kept during his absence. He then went away and never returned. Did Lycurgus go to Africa Hiram Bug: werry vr, wer to hunt lions? THE SIGHT SEEING AUTOMOBILE, Wer’RE JUST IN TIME FoR