Life — August 17, 1911 — page 22: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

tenet 2A THE RESCUE “BIRDS OF A FEATHER” America Art RATED food, sky-high prices, imitation meat inspection, robber tariffs, perpetual franchises, Niagara railway-mail overcharges, exas- perating express companies, confiscation of the public lands, strikes, lockouts, boy cotts, blacklists, overproduction, panics, child labor, unsanitary slums, lobbying lawyers, vaccinating physicians, vivisect- ing surgeons, mincing ministers, soul- less corporations, ballot stuffers, dollar patriots, baseball fanatics, passé parti- sans, half-baked aristocrats, dividend chasers, gifted grafters, owned judges, obfuscated lawmakers, purse-proud ruf- fians, tentacled trusts, best sellers, stocl: mblers, timid teachers, yellow journals, rich men’s sons, crowded conveyances, petty politicians, patent-leather Peck- sniffs, oratorical Judascs, literary Januses, business buccaneers, speed maniacs, Prob- dignagian plutocrats, and pretty women. “LTP Bs: Houses on Fifth Avenue T was in the paper last month that a rich brewer had bought for his mar- ried daughter the million dollar house of a rich department store merchant on Fifth Avenue in New. York. .That is the kind of thing that successful beer and successful merchandizing can have, and it is the sort of acquisition that Modest Means can watch with philo- sophical equanimity and resignation. Not to have a million dollar house on Fifth Avenue seems to Modest Means so much better, on the whole, than to have one Not. to be living.in the plane and with the folks who want, and can have, new million dollar houses on Fifth Avenue, seems, on the whole, to be su de- cidedly preferable to living on that plane and with those folks—provided one has a duly commodious habitation elsewhere. It is no laughing matter to buy a good house in New York; it is bound to cost a serious sum; but te get along without a house on Fifth Avenue is such an easy economy that it makes Modest Means feel rich to think how much he saves and with how little sacrifice by housing himself for forty, or fifty, or one or two hundred thousand dollars instead of a million, One has to have (or thinks he must) so many things that cost, so constantly and so much, that it is a kind of enrichment to read of a large pot of moncy going for some- thing he doesn't care at all to have He has saved all that, and never felt it! He is positively grateful to the af- fluent brewer and his daughter for shoul- dering that heavy load, and content that the house should have been a bargain, as the papers intimated. A bargain? Very likely. We suspect the day has passed when discerning peo- ple set much store on owning splend:d and conspicuous houses in New York. They want good houses, big, handsonie, well placed, but building or buying heuses in New York as monuments of am tion is a game that we suspect of hav- ing scen its best days. Houses in New York are so transitory! Observe the Chateau Schwab on the Riverside Drive! Will it stay or will it go? What of the fine houses that Hunt built for the Van derbilts, Mr. Huntington, Mr. Astor, and Mr. Gerry! Will they go, or will they stay? Maybe Senator Clark’s house will stay, unless some time it comes to see itself as others sce it. Mr. Whitney built a house on Fifth Avenue for glory; Mr. Yerkes did the same; Mr. Harri- man would have done something of the sort if he had lived; Mr. Carnegie built shrewedly and for comfort; Mr. Frick UNHERALDED PARTIAL SOLAR ECLIPSE VISIBLE AT SUNSET FROM VASSAR On- SERVATORY has bought a block-wide lot, and maybe he will build. Mr. Stilman has dug a large hole, and left it empty, and gone, they say to Paris. Building houses on Fifth Avenue has been too much like sailing on the } agara River above the Falls. Nothing residential stays surely put on that street so far, Every splendid house that stands below Fifty-ninth Street is in danger, and what will happen to those above Fifty-ninth is guesswork. WADE AND FOUND WANTING” comicbooks: XUM ‘om