Life, 1911-12-07 · page 16 of 112
Life — December 7, 1911 — page 16: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page is primarily **advertisements and light humor essays**, not political satire. The main content includes: 1. **Hammacher Schlemmer Tool Cabinet ad** (top): A Christmas gift advertisement for tool sets, featuring two men examining a wooden cabinet of mechanics' tools. The copy emphasizes quality and convenience for "the average man or boy" interested in tinkering—reflecting early 20th-century DIY culture and gift-giving conventions. 2. **"Health Food" essay** (center): A humorous first-person account mocking the era's obsession with health foods and dietary remedies. The author satirizes eating bland "health foods" (oatmeal, bran mash, beef tea) while ill, then recovers by eating beefsteak instead. The joke targets the period's pseudoscientific health crazes and the irony that forbidden "rich" foods actually restored vitality. 3. **Arnica Tooth Soap and Hunter Rye advertisements** (right): Standard product promotions. The page reflects 1920s consumer culture and contemporary skepticism toward fad diets—relatively timeless humor about wellness trends.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Hlustration is cf No. 100 There is nothing more fascinating to the average man or boy than Tinkering with Tools and for the man who is really handy with tools a present of one of our Combination Benches and Tool Cabinets for Christmas will givethim more pleasure than anything else you could select. It is a handsome oak cabinet containing 95 of the finest tools made and when open isa complete bench with vise ready for immediate use. For one less expert, or for the boy, we suggest one of our smaller cabinets. All tools are the highest grade standard mechanics’ tools, arranged inconvenient sets for home use. The quality is the same in all, the higher priced cabinets are larger and contain more tools. 21 Toots . 240" ve i in the sale of high-grade tooloutfits for home use; every set bearsour guarantee of quality. We are ploncertin tt iivect (we have no agents) or send for Catalogue No. 2965, iii HAMMACHER, SCHLEMMER & C HARDWARE, TOO! 1O., NEW YORK {89 4th Ave. and 13th St. AND SUPPLIES ——_—_—________j friends were telegraphed for, but before it was too late I threw off the shackles that bound me and began to eat beei- steak. At first life hung trembling in the balance and there was no chai the quotations of beef, but later on there was a slight delicate bloom on the wan cheek, and range cattle that had escaped a long, severe winter on the plains, be- gan to apprehend a new danger and to seck the secluded canyons of the inac- cessible mountains. I often thought while I was eating health food and waiting for death, how the doctor and other invited guests at the post mortem would start back in amazement to find the remains of an eminent man filled with bran, Through all the painful hours of the long, long night and the eventless day, while the mad throng rushed onward like a river toward eternity’s ocean, this thought was uppermost in my mind. I tried to get the physician to promise that he would not expose me and show the world what a hollow mockery I had been and how I had deceived my best friends. I told him the whole truth and asked him to spare my family the ha- ation of knowing that though [ $ Os "6 NONE Paris DAY ~ & # i a Health Food While trying to recons! scoped spine and put some new copper rivets in the lumbar vertebra this spring, 1 had occasion to thoroughly investi- gate the subject of so-called health foods, such as grucls, beef tea inundations, toasts, oatmeal mush, bran mash, soups, condition powders, graham gems, ground feed, pepsin, laudable mush and other hen feed usually poked into the inva who is too weak to defend himself. Of course it stands to reason that the reluctant and fluttering spirit may not be won back to earth and joy once more team in the leaden eye unless due care be taken relative to the food by means of which Nature may be made to assert herself. Ido not care to say to the world that we may woo from eternity the trembling life with pic. Welsh rarebit and other Id game will not do at first. But I think I am speaking the sentiments of a large and emaciated constituency when I say that there is getting to be a strong feeling against oatmeal submerged in milk and in favor of strawberry short cake. I almost ate myself into an carly grave in April by flying in the face of Providence and demoralizing Old Gas- tric with oatmeal. I ate oatmeal two weeks, and at the end of that time my BALTIMORE RYE MELLOW Sold at all rst-class cafes and by jobbers. ‘, Baltimore, Md. SRR RE Wk 2 ‘aa convenient—twice as good. metal box. 250 at all druggists or sent by mall, C. H. STRONG & CO. RNIC TOOTH SO; good for the whole mouth—cleanses, heals and makes Antiseptic the gums. Cleans and whitens the teeth, Neutralizes all mouth acids and prevents decay and discoloration. ‘Comes in cake form that will not break or spill—twiee Each eake in a compact CHICAGO HRARHARRARAAAO AAR AMAA CTOR AMAA ACRE ‘i g might have Ied a blameless life, my sunny exterior was only a short covering for bran and shorts and middlings, cracked wheat and pearl barley. I dreamed last night of being in a large city where the buildings were paved with dry toast and the soil was bran and oatmeal and the water was beef tea and gruel. All at once it came over me that I had solved the great mys- tery of death and had been consigned to a place of eternal punishment. The thought was horrible. A million eterni~ ties in a city built of dry toast and oat- meal! A home for never-ending cycles of ages, where the principal hotel and the post-office building and the opera house were all built of toast, and the fire department squirted grucl at the de- vouring element forever! It was only a dream, but it has made me more thoughtful and people notice that Iam not so giddy as I was. —Bill comicbookMeun