Life, 1909-05-20 · page 11 of 36
Life — May 20, 1909 — page 11: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
The main illustration depicts a domestic scene with a young mother and father anxiously watching over an infant, captioned "Young Mother: Oh, Jack, I do hope he won't marry some horrid girl." The satire targets parental anxiety about their children's future marriages. This reflects early 20th-century social concerns about class and suitable matches. The accompanying article, "Alma Mater, O," is a humorous poem about college reunion season. It mocks the nostalgia of returning alumni reminiscing about their college days while exaggerating the gap between youthful wildness and present respectability. The small cartoons on the right satirize an overly sentimental editor who collects reader jokes and contributions—poking fun at magazine culture itself. The overall tone is gentle social satire about American domesticity, education, and print media conventions of the era.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Young Mother: om, yack, 1 pow Alma Mater, O HIS is the season of the year when all the dear old college chums are planning to get back to the campus for the BIGGEST and BEST class day in history. If you were one of the class of '99—fourteen hundred men, of whom you were acquainted with about twenty- five—you will receive a notice of a DE- CENNIAL—a blowout compared with which Belshazzar’s feast was a quick lunch in the banking district. Out through the country, to each and WON'T MARRY SOME HORRID GIRL to all, is going a little bulletin which is calculated to call '99 men from their more or less honest occupations, from the bosoms of their families, where ex- istent—to come back to the venerable halls that still contain the learning '99 failed to absorb. Very likely the pam- phlet leads off with something like this: { Father Eli } We are | Mother Harvard | a thousand ng | Uncle Pennsy j menor more, 's restless ocean, to Pa- cific’s quiet shore, THE WASHWOMEN’S HAT We are coming back to meet you and to pound upon your door, With cheers and songs and feasting we shall greet you as before. Doesn't that thrill your blood? Don’t you experience a flareup of joy at the recollection of that swarm of young crit- ters, of whom you made one, who stumbled through English A, jollied through Fine Arts I, hollered like In- dians when “ Bummer '’ Brown crossed the line with the pigskin, and thus justi- fied the higher education? As proper a bunch of prigs as ever turned up trousers; weren't you, honest? And now you're going back, to sing the old songs, review the old pastimes, and receive a limp handshake and a fishy eye from the Dean, who doesn’t know you from Adam. Scotty, dear old Scot- ty, for whom you never had any use, will thump you on the back and ask you if you recall the time when “ they" put machine oil on your best clothes? “ Bill’ Watson (he was about as mean a cuss as they made 'em) will nearly pump your arms off at the telling of mad pranks you never had together. There Sse e "Seas r laughs when he gets your jokes, h your wit is not jocose; He drops your art in the basket, And keeps the stamps you inclose. comicbooks.com