Life, 1911-06-29 · page 15 of 45
Life — June 29, 1911 — page 15: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page satirizes two distinct targets: **Left side ("Summing the 'Isms'"):** A poem mocking the author's dabbling in fashionable intellectual and philosophical movements—from anarchism to Buddhism to aestheticism. The joke: after sampling every trendy ideology, the only "wisdom" gained is the banal observation that "the things you get are chiefly those you earn." It's satire of dilettantes who chase intellectual fads without genuine conviction. **Right side ("Honeymooners Ahoy!"):** Satire of a fictional "Husbands' Correspondence Bureau"—a marital advice service whose manager constantly remarries to "stay current" with fashion. The bureau cynically justifies its own divorce-and-remarriage cycle as necessary overhead expenses, deflecting criticism about hypocrisy. The cartoon illustrates the absurdity: a man in a boat discussing another's new plume (hat), while the bureau profits from marital dysfunction it embodies. Both pieces mock 1920s culture: intellectual posturing and the era's apparent epidemic of serial marriage and divorce among the wealthy.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Summing the “Isms” HAVE dabbled with the “ isms” in an amateurish way, I've been every sort of fad- dist that’s extant; I have delved, without apol- ogy. In every type of ‘ology From Fletcher back to Schop- enhauer and Kant; T've read volumes anarchistic, Commu-, Nibil-, Social-istic, I've been Buddhist, Karmist, Druid, without awe; I've kept pace with zeal ecstatic, With cach new and strange fanatic, From Elbertus down to Macterlinck and Shaw. I've a freak vocabulary built of phrases quite unique, I have pamphlets that would startle the police ; My beliefs are apt to vary From the revolutionary To the Carnegie idea of armored peace; I have plunged in dictetics, And in popular xsthetics, I've been dreamer, mystic, outlaw in turn; And the sum of all my labor Is this gem of wisdom, neighbor, That the things you get are chiefly those you earn! ing Dillon. “on, Jack! YOU HAVEN'T TOLD ME HOW YOU LIKED MY NEW were happily married again. We con- “LIFE: Honeymooners Ahoy! Husbands’ Correspondence Bureau offers some exceptional advantages to all regular customers. All patrons will be glad to learn that the manager is getting married again, in order to be up to date VERY husband who reads this manner, in justice to our old cus- this, no matter what his age, tomers, who have paid and are paying race or present condition of us regularly. We are also getting mar- servitude, will need the help ried again this year ourselves, and, of of this bureau at some time course, this involves us in extra ex- in his married life. He may pense. We make a point of getting mar- not believe this now, when ried occasionally, in order that we may full of confidence and love and hope, keep right up to date. We are abso- he thinks himself secure; but sud- — lutely forced to do this, otherwise we denly out of a clear sky, a crisis is could not keep track of all the styles in bound to rise, and we therefore urge upon all husbands to register their names with us. This involves no ex- pense, but should be taken as a precau- tion, for in case anything sudden should happen, it enables us to act immediately. We have already looked you up and found out your rating, and there is none of the disagreeable ceremony of having to wait while we ascertain your finan- cial standing We say this, of course, with the full knowledge that it will lead some of our critics to accuse us of mercenary mo- tives, when nothing could be further from our intention. But the fact is that this bureau is founded on business prin- ciples. We are obliged to conduct it in WE ALSO ARE GETTING MARRIED AGAIN THIS YEAR.” women, It goes without saying, how- ever, that our alimony bills are enor- mous, We pay them cheerfully, look- ing upon them as one of the ordinary overhead expenses of our business. At the same time it hurts us a little to re- ceive communications like the following: Dear Sir: How do you reconcile the lovely and allur- ing statement you are making with the fact that you cannot live happily with any woman for more in a couple of years at the out- side? Yours, ete, We should properly resent this letter if we had time, but we are just going off on a honeymoon and we cannot do it justice. It is perhaps just as well, how- ever, to state—in addition to what we have already said—that in every in- stance we have taken a personal inter- est in seeing to it that our former wives sider it our duty to do this; inasmuch comicbooks.com