Life, 1911-09-07 · page 15 of 44
Life — September 7, 1911 — page 15: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains two satirical cartoons and accompanying text mocking a charlatan "beauty expert" or con artist. **"One Moon for Coney Island"** (top): Shows a figure with a net catching the moon, reflecting absurdist humor about Coney Island tourist attractions and exaggerated promises. **"The Original Humbug"** (bottom): Depicts a brain diagram, likely satirizing pseudoscientific claims about beauty treatments or personality analysis. The text narrates the author's supposedly prestigious work advising King George V and his queen, but the tone is deliberately pompous and self-aggrandizing—clearly mocking snake-oil salesmen who inflate their importance. References to a "Famous Galaxy of Beauties" and "One Thousand Ways to Leave Home" are invented promotional materials meant to expose the character's fraudulence. The phrase "humbug" in the title confirms the satire: Life is ridiculing beauty charlatans and their manipulative marketing tactics targeting the gullible.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
benefit of our own personal supervision. We urged them to come over here, but business kept them at home. Our recent trip abroad was to keep in touch with some of our best known royal customers, and also to drop in on King George. He is looking very well, considering the ordeal he has been through; but unfortunately, at the time selected for our visit, his wife was pres- ent at the interview and we could not tell him all that we wanted to. Under the circumstances, however, we feel sure that he understood. We wish to say right here, that we have nothing but the highest respect for his wife. While we only talked with her a few moments, and while our conversation was only confined to a few brief remarks, we were favorably impressed with her manner and bearing. She is a woman of great dignity. We had just presented a copy of our Famous Galaxy of Beauties to ITEM—ONE MOON FOR CONEY ISLAND the king, together with our little bro- chure, entitled “One Thousand Ways to Leave Home,” and he was: looking over it with intense interest as she suddenly THE ORIGINAL MUMBUG entered. Yet beyond remarking that she would see him later she made no reference to this fact, and was extremely cordial. In making our departure, as we pressed her august hand, we ven- tured to remark that her husband was a trifle underweight, and she thanked us graciously. We mention this little in- cident to show that the world is pretty much the same everywhere you go We may say that we attribute our ex- traordinary success to a knowledge of that fact. As we are constantly having laid bare before us the secrets of the human heart, and witnessing its keen anguish, we feel more and more that all nien are brothers. Our terms, by the y, are reasonable and within the reach of all—except possibly those who have just returned from their honeymoons; Lot as a rule these happy people do not require any treatment, the germs of future trouble not being then apparent. We re- comicbooks.com