Life, 1910-04-07 · page 29 of 76
Life — April 7, 1910 — page 29: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page satirizes consumerism by rewriting famous poems with product advertisements embedded. Classic lines from Romanticism (Longfellow, Tennyson, Keats) are hijacked to pitch commercial products: Camphor Cream, Supernal Shoes, Mammon Motor-cars, and a Pianola piano. The joke targets how advertising invades all cultural spaces, even sacred literature. By forcing "practical" commercial messages into poetic form, Life mocks both aggressive marketing and consumers' willingness to accept it. The lower section ridicules melodramatic theater ("pork-packer's bride," "dance of seven carcasses") as absurdly overwrought entertainment, while the "Emergency Currency" section critiques proposed banking reforms, suggesting they benefit bankers over ordinary citizens. The cartoons and acrostic verses reinforce the theme: modern life reduced to commerce and shallow amusement.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Poetry Made Practical (With epologies to the poets) ELL me not in mournful numbers Life is but an empty dream; Nightly, e’er you seek your slumbers, Rub your face with Camphor Cream. Lady Clara Vere de Vere, Of me you shall not win renown Unless you wear Supernal Shoes, The finest made in all the town. I met a little cottage girl, She was cight years old, she said, With checks like rose, and teeth like pearl, On Foolem’s Food been bred! Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife ‘Tis possible, at last, for you to stray Along the cool sequestered vale of life, So get a Mammon Motor-car to-day. Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, So, whene’er you chew tobacco, Get Eureka for a dime! You must wake and call me early, Call me early, mother dear, To-morrow'll be the happiest time Of all the glad New Year— Of all the glad New Year, mother, The maddest, m jest day I'll get a Seraphina Pianola for to play. OUR DRAMA She: Yes, WE MAD A BOX THERE LAST NIGHT. I THINK THAT SCENE WHERE THE PORK-PACKER’S BRIDE STAGGERS INTO THE SLAUGHTER MOUSE AFTER DRINKING THE MAIR TONIC, AND DOES THE DANCE OF THE SEVEN CARCASSES, 1S JUST TOO CUTE FOR ANYTHING. MOTHER IS GOING TO TAKE THE CHILDREN TO THE MATINEE. Another Acrostic Fastidiously tollowing And absurdly aping Silly styles, Emergency Currency HE agitation for cmergency currency Promises to become very popular, not only because we all like curren Houever Nideous: but because we all have emergencie: Te indtation But the particular kind of emergen Of other currency that has been advocated in some quarters is not exactly what we want for, by its provisions, the bankers will have all the currency while we shall still A LITTLE bigamy is a dangerous AS SHE LOOKED TO MER ZIANCE have our emergencies. thing. Nonsensical ninnies! comicbooks.com