Life, 1909-07-08 · page 12 of 28
Life — July 8, 1909 — page 12: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This satirical piece mocks wealthy New York society's endless, trivial pursuits. The text catalogs their shallow activities: hosting balls, burning through servants, arranging social events, pursuing gossip, and obsessing over fashionable minutiae. The main cartoon depicts "THE LIMITED"—a train with an ornate passenger car, likely satirizing how the wealthy isolate themselves from ordinary people. The detailed mechanical diagrams above suggest the "machinery" of high society—its complicated, artificial social structures and rules. The satire's point: New York's elite spend enormous energy maintaining appearances and status through meaningless activities, treating life as an elaborate mechanical performance disconnected from reality. The "Limited" train symbolizes their exclusive, self-contained world.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
EOPLE seem never to grow weary of baiting our friends the Fashionables. Col- onel Henry Watterson is hot on the scent again and preparing for a kill. After him are young Mr. Patterson, Mr. Sinclair, Dr. Aked and the preachers, ‘These, in turn, are followed by the Sun- day supplements and a full pack of ama- teur bloodhounds. Everybody is very much enthused and excited—except, of course, the Fashionables themselves, who blithely and serenely continue on their way. Why, Colonel, should you pursue th further? Would you wish to burn them, perhaps, in oil? We know a trick worth two of that! Would you break them on a wheel? Pooh! How trivial and puny are your tortures! Let us, rather, leave them where they are Let us permit them to go on and ride, at a furious speed, in motors; to issue engraved invitations; to answer little notes and leave P. P. C.’s; to bant and lace and pinch their toes; to have their hair glossed and dyed and occasional augmented; to sce food placed before them and feel no appetite for it; to em- iy ioe bal New York Society, Again thle, SOCIETY y a retinue of servants who burn with lust to leave them; to have sentiments but no passions; to swallow patés, pills palpable flattery; to deny. silly stories about themselves in the papers; to buy spurious works of art at hair- raising prices; to lend money to friends and so to lose them; to make them- selves agreeable to bores because they have tasted their truffles and terrapin; to have large nurseries but no little chil- dren; to be robbed and fleeced by their and “beauty and trades people; to telephone to a tedious procession of bachelors to fill a place at dinner or an odd bed in the country; to dispute about lawsuits, libels, taxes and rates of interest; to be forced to watch stock-tickers and musical comedies; to shoo, defy and do battle with black clouds of ennui; to pay bills and fiddlers servants doctors '* and trifling visits; to sell tickets for bazaars and piano recitals; to offer cold cordials and tepid apologies; to marry their daugh- ters to scoundrels in Europe; to change their dress and demeanor and opinions from one day to another; to own houses in town but never to live in them; to be snubbed and derided and misun- derstood; to sign checks, receipts and pledges; to store furniture, furs, jewels, securities and hangings and to be vigi- lant about moths and fire and burglars and breakage and water and insurance; to send more margin to their brokers; to journey to Carlsbad and there to drink liquid abominations; to lose sight of their feet and friends and youthful ideals; to find that their hearts and na- tures have become hard; to divorce the one and marry the other; to grow fat and old and nervous and full of rancour and rheumatism and then, at last—shall we go on, Colonel, to the very end? Francis W. Crowninshield. AN loves a modest woman, yet does his best to spoil that trait of her character, THE LIMITED comicbooks.com