Life, 1909-12-02 · page 12 of 80
Life — December 2, 1909 — page 12: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a promotional announcement for an upcoming feature in *Life* magazine. The page teases that the next issue will showcase portraits and profiles of notable contributors to the publication—described as "handsome" and "intelligent" people who work behind the scenes. The text mentions specifically that **Algernon Scrubbware Hobnail** (an author) will be featured among "a few dozen of the choicest ones." The whimsical name suggests this may be a fictitious or satirical example rather than an actual contributor. The announcement's tone is tongue-in-cheek, boasting that these people have been secretly helping create *Life* magazine "without anybody knowing how they looked." It's essentially *Life* magazine promoting itself and its creative team to readers in a self-congratulatory, humorous way.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
OU’LL Be Surprised When you see in the next issue pictures of The People Who Make LIFE (Not all of them, of course, but a few dozen of the choicest ones.) Handsome? We rather guess ! Intelligent? We should say ! They make a long procession—they take up the center cartoon page of LIFE and run over into two other pages. What is this we are talking about? Take an easy chair, settle yourself down and be comfortable and we'll tell you all in a very few well-chosen words, of course. (We can’t afford to use up this valuable space in long-winded essays. Once upon a time in an idle moment, as we casually looked over the contents of our esteemed contemporaries among the magazines, we noticed that they were in the habit of presenting their readers with pictures of some of the great people who were ‘ engaged”’ in doing something-or-other for the coming year. There would be a miniature halftone picture, for example, of Mr. Algernon Scrubware Hobnail, author of (etc., etc.,), whose charming (fill in here with ‘ stories,” ‘‘epigrams,”’ ‘ novels,’’ ‘poems,’ etc.,) have long startled and “gripped ” a wondering world, will ‘contribute ’’ several (here fill in with a machine-made description of this particular author’s varied powers). And ‘so on for three or four pages (on a basis of an exchange of similar matter with other esteemed contemporaries). It occurred to us, right then and there, that the contributors of LIFE had been in con- cealment long enough. Silently, and with an almost annoying modesty, they had been helping to make LIFE (words fail us here) what it is to-day, without anybody knowing how they looked. And so, for the benefit of LIFE’S readers, we asked Mr. Budd to prepare, in his own characteristic manner, a procession of LIFE’S contributors. Not all of them, of course, but the principals in our conspiracy to enlighten, amuse and astonish the universe (a continuous performance with no curtain). Mr. Budd has done it, and the result will appear in next week’s LIFE. This number, by the way, is the Book Number. But that’s purely incidental. We are so obsessed with that great procession that we can’t write about anything else just now. AU REVOIR! comicbooks.com