Life, 1909-05-06 · page 16 of 48
Life — May 6, 1909 — page 16: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
The cartoon depicts a fishing scene where a well-dressed couple encounters a boy who claims to have caught trout "about's long's yer fut" (about a foot long). An excited gentleman fisherman wants to see them. The humor appears to rest on the boy's exaggeration or deception about his catch. The accompanying essay, "The Way to Wealth," satirizes a literary competition by *The Bodleian* magazine. Publisher John Lane offered one guinea (minimal pay) for competitors to identify which of ten novels contained five specific passages. Essayist Agnes Repplier mocks the absurdity: readers would labor through thousands of pages of tedious prose for trivial reward, searching for unremarkable sentences like "I am personally of opinion that they do these things better in the Fiji Islands." The satire targets both exploitative publishing practices and the desperation of writers and readers willing to endure such pointless work for pittance—linking the cartoon's theme of exaggeration to the essay's critique of false promises of easy money.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
The Lady: akt YOU CATCHING ANY TROUT, LITTLE Boy? The Boy: yur. The Lady NOW DIG ARE THEY? The Boy: ’pout’s Lonc’s YER FUT. The Man (ardent fisherman): wy jove, you DON’T say so! Let's sex THEM, The Way to Wealth HE system of offering prizes to awaken talent by tempting cupid has accomplished some wonderful results. There are few things which people will not try to do—in open de- possibility—when enterprising publishers start a tition,” and promise a thousand dollars for the best of the bad results. But a new d lurid light has been thrown upon the toiling army of prize-workers by the announcement of an ingenious game which the Bodleian—a monthly review published by Mr. John Lane proposes to play with its patron This game is a sort of literary hunt-the-slipper. Five pas- sages are selected from ten novels, the novels being Mr. Lane’s publications, and the passages of a colorless character that might stand undetected on any printed page. Competitors are bidden to say in which of the ten books the five quotations ing precise and full details ""; and for this piece of superhuman labor a prize of one guinea is offered—the de- cision of the editor being “final and irrevocable.’’ Should more than one correct list be sent in, the prize will be divided. Is it possible that even in these hard times men and women can be found willing to read ten novels for five dollars, and to read them without the blessed privilege of skipping? Can we think without compassion of a fellow creature tracking such a sentence as this: “I am personally of opinion that they do these things better in the Fiji Islands,” through nine fat volumes, only to find that it is lurking undiscovered in the tenth. Do things better in the Fiji Islands! We should rather think they did, or in any other islands where the curse of Cadmus has not fallen, where the pleasures of the intel lect are unknown, and where no happy, naked, letterless islander peruses painstakingly some three thousand pages of printed matter on the chance of winning a fraction of a guinea. Agnes Repplier. comicbooks.com