Life — March 4, 1909 — page 26: what you’re looking at

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

“LIFE A Friend’s Opinion Ah, Lire! dear Lire! each time you come, I smile, then gargie, then gacp tor breath. Ah, well! ‘tis the common fate of all In the midst of Lire we are tickled to death Little Old New York COLLECTION of brick, stone, steel, ce- ment, lath, plaster and mortgages, ar. ranged in ugly and inartistic mass separated and criss-crossed by ribbons of asphalt, cobblestones and filth, super- imposed upon a small islandcalled Manhattan which is punctured and subwayed like a Swiss cheese. New York is the metropolis of America. the mouth of the re- public, the tongue of the nation, the eye of the continent, a pocket edition of Babel, a digest of the United States, with fewer Americans and more Americanism an any spot between Calais, Me. and the Kingdom of Heaven. It is the first aid to national assimilation, swallow- ing all that floats up past the Goddess of Liberty; and what it cannot digest it pushes over the Harlem bridge into the rural and suburban remainder of the republic, to be trimmed, skinned, mixed, moulded, dried, baked and polished into Americanism and rendered fit to return to Gotham for finan- cial depilitation. New York is the promised land, looking green, fat, luscious and joyous from the outside deserts; the promised land flow- i with milk and honey, the pasturage of lambs and bulls, and of bears which eat up those who monkey with the profits; a land of promise where the flesh pots smell savory. where the labels are better than the bottles, where the bricks are gold and the goods are green; where the Good Samaritan bathes the wounds of the man from Jericho, Ind., with knock- out drops, relieves him of his financial pains and has him sent to the Island for repairs. Every race on earth claims New York; some pre-empt it; some own it; some imagine they own it; all cultivate it; a chosen few harvest it; and all agree that it makes Paris and paradise look like a circus lemonade. The Anglo-Saxon grubs, grafts and growls in New York; the Teuton guzzles, grunts and garners there; Israel fleeces, finances, and fran- chises it; the modest Celt rules, regulates and robs it; and all and several give the stranger within her gates the glad hand— in the solar plexus and the breeches pocket. York is the hot and haughty hub of the universe. Boston, which once claimed the title, has moved out along the spokes to the rim, looking like a faded freckle on a rubber tire, trying to eke out a reputation as a summer resort on a precarious capital of east wind, theology and clam flats, Asa pleasure resort New York is at the head of the procession a watering place it is an alcoholic failure; its water wagons are stored in Brooklyn, and the passengers of the wagons in Bloomingdale; and over the city portals the visiting sport may read, “ Abandoned dope for ye who enter here.’ New York is It. No man will ever see even a contractor. It is the home of the dead sport, the cold bottle, the hot bird, the rugged motorman, the courtly cop, the roaring reformer, the innocent insurance man, the yellow press peril, the black hand, the red table Whote wine, the blue ruin and all the ingredients of a strenu- finish, not ous life and a swift finish. It has other birds besides the hot one on the broiler and the stiff ones in cold storage. The American eagle makes a one-night stand there on the Glorious Fourth; the other 364 days he roosts low and mute in the Bronx Zoo, and his job of screaming is understudied by the turkey buzzard and cormorant. All nights are devoted to the Manhattan lark, a nocturnal humming bird, sometimes known as the tenderloin mocking bird. The Powery carrier pigeon, which is called the stork, is tolerated below Fourteenth street and on the East Side; but the chippy flutters on the Rialto and the British sparrow on the avenue. Ye who have listened with credulity 10 the whisper of the rubberneck wagonman in Poston and Chicago should pack up your unearned increment and hie to New York; and as you go home with a keeper to a sanitarium, you can say with joy, “I have looked upon the Promised Land; now let thy servant negotiate the promissory note.” Joseph Smith, ORTUNATELY it isn't so much what the world knows about us as what they think of us. The House That Jack Built: Tabulated Read from the Bottom Upwards, as You Would Build a House. Devrivations This is the Mortgage superimposed upon the Bills added to the Insurance that swelled the Tax that gobbled the Rent that was “saved” on the House that Jack built. These are the Bills added to the Insurance that swelled the Tax that gobbled the Rent that was “ saved” “ saved" on the House that Jack built. This, the Insurance that swelled the Tax that (see below). This is the Tax that gobbled the ‘Rent that was “saved ” on the ‘House that Jack built. This is the Rent “saved” on the House that Jack built. This is the House that Jack built! Frederick Moxon, comicbooks.com