Life, 1909-09-02 · page 15 of 48
Life — September 2, 1909 — page 15: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This Life magazine page contains three satirical pieces: **"The Professor and His Trained Mice"** is a sentimental monologue by a circus trainer about his performing mice troupe. The satire mocks overly emotional showmen who anthropomorphize animals—he treats them like temperamental opera stars, complete with jealousies and mourning rituals. The humor lies in the absurdity of applying human drama to mice. **"Called Off"** depicts animal characters (a mouse, owl, and grasshopper) as boxing promoters, with a centipede fighter. It's a brief joke about competitive animal matchmaking, likely satirizing the era's popular boxing culture by reducing it to insect-level absurdity. **"An Old-Fashioned Mother"** uses a humorous age reference—the mother warns her 116-year-old daughter against flirting with a "Methuselah boy"—to mock outdated parental attitudes about courtship and propriety. The satire suggests such protective moralizing is prehistoric and ridiculous. All three pieces employ exaggeration and anthropomorphism to mock contemporary social attitudes around sentimentality, spectacle, and traditional morality.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
"LUPE The Professor and His Trained Mice H, yes, certainly, you can see my artists! Come right in. This is General Hannibal. He fires the gun at the signal. And this is Babs, who jumps through the paper hoops. Never have seen that act? It will pay you to do so, I as- sure you. Allow me, sir, to introduce you to Mademoi- selle Felicity, the star of the troupe. Ah! she has caused me trouble; much trouble. She is so sensitive, so touchy, I should say! And has to have the best room eve! where we go. Would you believe it, she sulks if I pay at- tention to the others. See her now, sniffing at my remarks. Yes, mademoiselle, it is you have made the trouble. That black band? Ah! She must wear that to her dying day! That, sir, is in honor of little Corporal Jim. You should have seen him! He was the best of them all. My! I'm telling you the truth when I say you could read a newspaper through his ears, so delicate were they. And such a brave little man—the bravest of them all. Yes, she wears it in honor of him. And she, the little glutton—pardon me, made- moiselle, I did not mean that. Yes, she was the cause of You see, I had my troupe once in—what is that place? 3 souri, where a cousin of my wife's had settled, and we were asked there to visit. And you know there was a change of air somewhere, and the Corporal, ah, well, he took sick. I had him in cotton wool, he with pneumonia, and I feeding him three drops of milk an hour, and that diluted. He was the clown of the troupe, you know, and you should have seen him enter into the spirit of it all. One of his tricks, was to catch the others by the tail, just as they were about’ to per- AN .OLD-FASHIONED MOTHER “ Now, MISS, DON’T YOU LET ME HEAR OF YOU FLIRTING WiTH THAT METHUSELAH BOY AGAIN. THE IDEA OF A GIRL OF YOUR AGE, BARELY 116, THINKING SO MUCH ABOUT Bors! IT’S RipicuLous.”” ne ExwBirion_) CALLED OFF WHAT'S THE TROUBLE HERE? ER AGREED TO FIGHT ANY- Mr. Mous. Mr, Owl: wity! CoNGER Gkassito! THING THAT CAME ALONG, AND THEY'VE MATCHED MIM AGAINST JEFP CENTIPEDE. JEFP MAS A SHORT REACM, BUT ME GIVES THIRTY BLOWS AT ONCE. form, and drag them about. Oh, my! but this would make a hit with the audiences. Only, of course, Mademoiselle Felic- ity here, who docs the bareback act on the pug dog, she would never have submitted to such an indignity. I mind the Corporal now, when I would whisper so, “Nip ‘em Buddy, nip ’em! how he would grab the others by the tip of the tail. I tried to teach it to Billy there, but it was no use. Here, Billy, there's one thing you can do—turn a somer- sault for the gentleman. Up and around; that’s it. I tell you sir, an artist is always born. The Corporal had it in him. It was genius. That's the only name for it. And when he was lying there in wool, with his paws up and his eyes kinder glazy, it was a bad spell for me, knowing he had pneumonia, Do they have that? Well, I should say yes. Why, some of them artists is that delicate they catch cold at the slightest provocation, and being performers, of course, they're more susceptible. Excuse me if I use my handker- chief, but thinking of the Corporal always puts me on the blink. Oh, yes, sure, I'll tell you! I put the whole bunch in my room where I thought they were safe, never giving a thought to the brat of a boy at my cousin's, because they, be- comicbooks.com