Life, 1910-07-14 · page 23 of 40
Life — July 14, 1910 — page 23: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
**"One of Life's Little Ironies"** depicts a bridegroom confessing to a hotel clerk that he's a New York real estate dealer who has been so consumed with business that he's neglected to experience life—falling in love and marrying only now. The irony: he could afford to buy the hotel but lost interest in the deal because of romantic distraction. This satirizes the American businessman's single-minded pursuit of wealth at the expense of human experience. The other brief satirical pieces mock contemporary social issues: railroad safety improvements, divorce and heredity, excessive federal reverence for mail security, and marital anxiety ("Hope Deferred"). The small cartoon shows a man announcing an engagement ("taking the plunge"), using outdated courtship language ("Doctor Church-Mouse"). These are light social commentaries typical of Life's satirical approach to American manners and institutions.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
(38 @i— eat ONE OF LIFE’S LITTLE IRONIES: — SO NEAR AND YET 60 PAR corner, sir. Own half the block running up to Fifth Avenue Came near taking on this little hotel of yours, but fell in love by chance and lost interest in my business. Then came the wedding and this little trip. Ah, perfectly delightful, sir, per- ” The clerk leaned over just a little more. “Excuse me, sir, but would you mind,’ he asked, “ telling me what you have been doing with yourself all these years, to be so—so—well, so far behind? ’* The bridegroom smiled. “Well, you see, it’s this way,’ he replied. “I am a New York real estate dealer. My father lived on a farm here fifty years ago, and I have been so busy trading ever since that this is the first opportunity I have had to wake up and fall in love and get married and see the sights.”” Improvement W em to improve in some things. The report on rail- road fatalities and accidents for the year ending June 30, 1909, is said to be an extraordinary improvement on re- cent previous reports, and especially an improvement on the report for 1907. It will be recalled that in that year or there- about the railroads were overworked and had to hire too many green hands. If railroad fatalities and injuries are decreasing the next thing we may hear is that homicide and divorce are falling off. The low of heredity should operate against both o these latter practices, Divorce scems more or less unfavor able to the transmission of traits to progeay—though not so much so as it might *se—and homicidal propensities are prejudicial to the raising of families except in some parts of Kentucky and Tennessee Hope Deferred OPE springs eternal in the patient husband's breast Wife always is to be but never is quite dressed The Mails HEN does a crime become punishable? When it is committed by mail. The mail is the most sacred thing known to the United States Government except itself, Noth- ing bat treason surpasses in egregiouscess the misuse of the mails. So far as the Federal authorities are concerned, one may steal, gamble and murder so long as it is not done by correspondence. Do ye whatsoever ye will, one unto another, but do not write it down and stick a stamp on the upper right-hand corner, for, if ye do, then, in truth, will all the demons of justice be unloosed upon your trail I'M SO GLAD YOU CAME THIS WAY, DOCTOR CHURCH-MoUSE. MISS LILY AND I HAVE DECIDED TO TAKE THE PLUNGE.’?