Life, 1910-12-22 · page 3 of 44
Life — December 22, 1910 — page 3: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page is primarily **advertising**, not editorial content or satire. The main advertisements are: 1. **Cortez Cigars** (top left) — marketed to "men of brains," made in Key West 2. **ALCO automobiles** (center/right) — American Locomotive Company promotes their cars, emphasizing quality materials and endurance over speed 3. **Old Overholt Rye** (bottom left) — whiskey made from Pennsylvania rye The only editorial content is "The Literary Zoo" column discussing how comedians use adversity for dramatic effect, referencing 19th-century stage comedians and dramatist Edwin Booth. No political cartoons or social satire appear on this page. It's a standard early-20th-century magazine layout mixing advertisements with literary commentary.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
-MADE AT KEY WEST Bez Kilian Pe The Literary Uses of Adversity Half a century has elapsed since that comedian with his little one dying at home inspired his audience emotion- ally. Few men have not heard the story a dozen times. The comedian was acting wretchedly. His scene proved a failure, Everybody in the theatre grieved over the decay of his- trionic powers so sublime. Down to the footlights thereupon stepped the actor, “If I have not raised a laugh to-night,” the story makes him say in effect, “it is because I have a little one dying at home.” Nothing is so difficult to explain as the universal acceptance of the thor- oughly false psychology of this anec- dote. For had the comedian's little one really been dying at home, the re- action from his grief would have ren- dered him inimitably funny. He could have played the broadest farce to per- fection. This rule of contraries worked strikingly in the case of Ed- win Booth. When he left the stage after the poignant scene with Ophelia OVERHOLT RYE made only from choicest Pennsylva- nia Rye and pure Spring Water—aged for yearsin the wood. Every precious drop is mild and mellow. There can be no better, purer whiskey for medi- cinal, family or social use. Distitled and bottled In bond by A. Overholt & Co., Pittsburgh, Pa. Confidence, safety, luxury and distinction, touring in car that two years in succession has won The Vanderbilt Cup. You may not want to ride as fast as ninety-five miles an hour- You do want a car with the distinctive ALCO materials, workmanship and record of endurance. American, Locomotive Company 1886 Broadway, NEW YORK. 2501 Michigan Ave.,CHICAGO. (LICENSED UNDER SELDEN PATENT) he laughed. The strain caused that reaction. A strain of the same nature made Dickens inimitably funny in some parts of David Copperfield. He could display so fine a humor, because his domestic difficulties rendered him so wretched, Thackeray is no excep- tion to the universal rule. His mar- ried life was a tragedy. That is why Vanity Fair is such a masterpiece. The unhappy wives of men of genius have become proverbial. Not that the misery of men of genius need be do- 1135 mestic. Often it is purely financial In any event. it is imperative that writers suffer, if not at home, then when they take their wives to the sea- shore. It seems to be the function of the wives of men of genius to make their husbands wretched in order that literature may not suffer. Shake- speare’s humor owed everything to the fact that he had to run away from his wife precisely as Milton's “ Para- dise Lost” is a masterpiece, because (Continued on page 1136)