Life, 1909-10-21 · page 11 of 32
Life — October 21, 1909 — page 11: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page satirizes wealthy college students at elite institutions (Yale, Harvard, Princeton). The article criticizes how these boys receive financial support despite poor academic performance, contrasting them with scholarship students who must work harder. The top cartoon shows privileged boys at leisure ("A watched pot never boils"), contrasting their idle behavior with the text's argument that they're "not made to work." The lower illustration ("Portrait of Her Late Husband: Take My Advice and Don't") appears to mock a woman receiving counsel, likely satirizing social pretension or marriage dynamics among the upper classes. The "Nice Question" section debates whether a new Christian Science Monitor column is "verse" or "jokes"—questioning whether it's serious literature or satire itself.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
"LIFE? Comparative College Boys RE We Spoiling Our Boys Who Have the Best Chances A in Life? inquires Professor Paul Van Dyke in the Jetober Seribuer's, and points out that the college boys on whom the most money is spent as a group, the soorest showing in scholarship. It is well known that in art astern colleges the boys from h schools beat the boys from the exp ve private preparatory schools in scholarship. Professor Van Dyke tells ut that, and tells of a little investiga- 1 of his own. In five semor classes Yale, Harvard and Princeton there cre 166 young men whose names were the New York Social Register. One in four of them got some sort of honor- le mention at graduation, as against a eneral average for all the men in their classes of one in two Are likely boys like these being spoiled r life hecause they are not made tv work? Some of them are, of course. c scholarship and do not try for the s Regisi is were doiny twenty ore work than appears. The distinctions they do try for are ars after they left college, and how record. These chaps, as a social and athletic. For these many of their value mined éiizens compared not value the distineti them try hard. The question is whether then with the average of their college these distinctions are worth anything, — contemporaries and that is a question not to be answered off hand A Nice Question One would like to know what the 166 UR esteemed comtemporary Christian Se lished in Boston, is running verse and jokes daily Without prejudice one way or another we are moved to these retlection Are the jokes jokes and is the verse verse? Or are we to think th ey are jokes and think it is verse There being no material things there can be no such thing as a joke Verse in the concrete Yet. if we merely think they are jokes or it is verse, then are they of 1s it If they are and it is, how can exist? If we simply think they are and 1 the question becomes involy column of verse and matter? Or is reading m nanifestat vind Are we k that if we thin it is, or that if we think think it is, then it isn't Portrait of Her Late Husband: Take MY ADVICE AND bo T NTMER COOK OR PEARY comicbooks.com