Life, 1910-11-03 · page 39 of 72
Life — November 3, 1910 — page 39: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
The top silhouette depicts women voting—indicated by "WOMEN VOTE HERE" signs—representing women's suffrage, a contentious political issue of the early 20th century. The main text discusses literary criticism and writing style. A section titled "Use Short Words" ironically demonstrates its own principle by using deliberately complex vocabulary ("polysyllabic orthography," "ineluctable," "obfuscation") to argue that writers should use simple language. This is satirical self-contradiction—the author practices the opposite of what they preach. The "Tribute to Vivisectors" section quotes a Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate calling scientific researchers "cranks," then sarcastically suggests Pennsylvania's health authorities resemble medical experts elsewhere—implying they too oppose animal testing. The bottom illustration, captioned "THE ARRIVAL OF DYSPEPSIA IN NEW ENGLAND," shows a shipwreck with cargo spilling, humorously personifying indigestion as an unwelcome immigrant arriving by boat, poking fun at nativist anxieties about foreign arrivals.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
TO REASON WHY"? from its crew. It is an ordinary and agreeable part of his particular duties to announce that a familiar land- mark is once more two points off the starboard bow and that all is well; but it is even more incumbent upon him to give the bearings of unfamiliar objects in the offing. And Mr. Hutchinson, being a new writer of evident talent, with a point of view of his own and the distinct suggestion of possibilities about him, is the kind of object in the offing that it is the reviewer’s particular duty to give attention to. The truth is that combination of Mr. Hutchinson’s talent and point of view is so unfamiliar that the reviewer suspects him- self of harking back to personal prejudices rather than to critical principles in trying to estimate its worth; so that the best that the lookout can do under the circumstances is to an- nounce that there is a strange fish in sight that occasionally blows like a small whale, but more often disports itself like a large porpoise. 7 T is a pity that there is no term of definition (corresponding, let us say, to that of “ minor poet "’), for those sincere and often talented writers of fiction whose well-trimmed lamps, though of lesser candle-power and visible at no great range, yet burn with neither smoke nor splutter and shed a steady light. If there were one it would come handy for application to Anne Douglas Sedgwick, whose novel, Franklin Winslow Kane (The Century, $1.50), is technically so deft a piece of verbal stippling and as a story is so nicely balanced between an interpretative presentation of human vacillation and an agreeably inconsequential entertainment. The book deals with the obscurer social traffic between America and England and follows the development and denouement of a situation in which four characters—delicately conceived and differentiated types of unconscious shilly-shalliers—make a mess of their own desires through the cowardice of their own convictions. One might perhaps describe it as the history of a “ foozled"’ crisis. J. B. Kerfoot. Tribute to Vivisectors T is reported that the Democratic candidate for Governor of Pennsylvania says, “ Of all the cranks in the world the scientific crank is the worst." Looks as if the health authorities of Pennsylvania re- sembled the medical experts in some other States. Use Short Words ITERARY aspirants should religiously eschew polysyl- labic orthography. The philosophical and philological substructure of this principle is ineluctable. Excessively at- tenuated verbal symbols inevitably induce unnecessary com- plexity and consequently exaggerate the obfuscation of ‘the mentality of the peruser. Conversely, expressions which are reduced to the furthermost minimum of simplification and compactness, besides contributing realistic verisimilitude, con- stitute a much less onerous handicap to the reader’s perspica- city. Observe, for instance, the unmistakable and inescapable expressiveness of onomatopoetic, interjectional, monosyllabic utterances, especially when motivated under strenuous emo- tional circumstances. How much more appealing is their euphonious pulchritude than the preposterous and pretentious pomposity of elongated verbiage. ITTLE grains of rumor, little drops in stock, Make the mighty market like a weathercock. THE AKRIVAL OF DYSPEPSIA IN NEW ENGLAND comicbooks.com