Life — January 14, 1909 — page 8: what you’re looking at

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

Fat HIS is the day of the Fat Man. The American world demands men of ; ats grand passion all its facts, fan- cies, fables and foibles are Biramed in and founded on fat. To be fat is to be feasted and flat- tered; only the lean languish; only the fat flourish. We are reaping where our fathers sowed. They taught that fat and virtue were synonymous; fat and infamy were eternally at war; fat and laughter were brothers, Crsar had a taste for fat men; the robber in Gil Blas had a pen- chant for fat kitchen maids; in Africa and the mystic Orient fat has ever been the final and supreme test of female beauty; the East could not get too much of a good thing. We of the Occident link leanness with villainy; our rascals must be thin and hungry; Death, F ine, Plague and all mundane unpl antries are bony and underfed; and despite the fact that our ascetics and athletes are osscous and meatless, atten- uation is an essen: of depravity in our philosophy. We measure our graces by our greases, our men by their meat. We are sceptical of St. Simon Stylite starving on top of a pillar; and smile indulgently at Heliogabalus, the only fat scoundrel we recall. The twentieth century belongs to the Fat: it has given us men with fat under their belts, fat under their hats; men with pods and wads fat laden; it is the age of fat things and fat frying, farms, trusts, octopi, a fat land flowing with Standard Oil and easy money. The twentieth century is the age of fat, of fatty degencration of the Deca- logue, of fatwits in the forum, pods in pulpits and politics, fat Fabius in finance, Brobdignago on the bench, cor- pulent corporations; an age when honor is estimated by obesity, brains by bulk, isdom by waist-measure, talent by ton- nage; when Gog, Goliath and Gargantua *LTFE* are our idols, the hay scales our altars and the Chariot of Aurora is displaced by the freight car. The walrus and the whale are our totems; we anoint our chosen ones with kerosene and oleomar- garine; and we expect Father Time to drop his scythe and hour-glass, get a hair cut, diet up on food fats and lithia and cultivate his embonpoint. The only fly in the butter of a fat age is our passion for long, lean, linguistic girls; we balk at the Oriental ideal; we refuse to substitute Helen of Avoir- dupois for Helen of Troy. A. sensible age we pursue fat and Morgan; we eschew the Fata Morgana, unless we follow Bryan and band wagons. Joseph Smith, A Crying Need HAT is really wanted at the present time is a standard of misconduct. We are constantly doing things in doubt, as if we hadn't a right to do them. The confusion caused by people doing things which in their circumstances we had no right to expect, is the principal cause of our troubles. It ought to be definitely settled, for example, that any millionaire who has, say, over a hundred millions, will thereafter lead an honest life. If he has only fifty millions his. life should be semi-honest, and if he has only a paltry ten millions, then it ought to be conceded that he can loot a few railroads or so until he gets on his feet. It is the principle of disorder that is most objectionable. Just when we think a man has gotten enough together to make him fairly honest, lo and behold, we find him selling gold mines or rigging the market. It would be easy to establish a scale of conduct. It could be regulated like the tariff, with an ad valorum schedule. Up to, say, ten thousand a year, no man can afford to be dishonest. He ought to get up in the cars and give up his seat to women under thirty-five at least, and of course he will not take the Miss Henrietta: you KNOW I'M CRAZY TO LEARN TO SKATE, GEORGE, DEAR, BUT 1 inherit A FEARFUL DREAD OF THE WATER. ge Owner (taking friend for trip): wow DO YOU LIKE THE ACK SEAT, OLD MAN? “T-—-ER—WOULDN'T MISS IT FOR ANY- THI si chance of robbing any safe. From ten thousand up to one hundred thousand he can engage in little dishonest flyers, by making one of a pool or putting through a land deal or so for variety. When he get§ fifty millions or more together, however, every man ought to ask himself plainly the question: Whether, from now on, he ought not to be a philanthropist. Doesn't he owe this to his fellow men? Tabloids B strong; but not at the wrong time or place, or for the wrong thing. Be stronger to help than to hurt; and be just as strong to sit still and hold your peace as to jump in and make trouble. Patience is a form of energy, ex- hausting at times, but enormously effec- tual. Meekness, usually confused with timidity, is the antithesis, not of cour- age, but of bumptiousness, and is one of the valuable fruits of cultivated self- control. Great men have lacked it, as Andrew Jackson and Roosevelt; still greater men have had it, as Moses and Lincoln. ARKIE (boarding @ train): I heard "bout youh wife dyin’, Jim. Whar yo’ gwine now? “T’se off to join de Mormons; hit keeps one woman hustlin’ too much to support a heavy eatah lak m comicbooks.com