Life, 1912-09-12 · page 19 of 52
Life — September 12, 1912 — page 19: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page from *Life* magazine contains several layers of early-20th-century American satire: **The main cartoon** depicts a Texas farmer showing a visitor his "straw mats for New York"—likely mocking either agricultural exaggeration or the perceived naïveté of rural Americans selling worthless goods to city dwellers. **The scattered humorous notices** (left side) satirize the chaos of early automobile culture and rural/resort life: escaped lunatics shooting at cars, discriminatory roadhouses ("No Gentiles accommodated"), sketchy ferrymen accepting bribes, and domestic mishaps (skunks invading honeymoon bungalows). These mock both automotive dangers and the disorder of turn-of-the-century leisure travel. **The "Medieval History" article** satirizes college education itself—professors teaching unmarketable, confusing subjects (Goths, Vandals, etc.) that students retain nothing from, wasting endowment money. **"Good News for Some Animals"** uses ironic praise to mock Dr. Doyen's claim that laboratory animal testing is useless for human medicine—implying his own medical discoveries are therefore also jokes. The overall tone mocks progress, education, and modern life's absurdities.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Go slow. An automobile in hand is worth two an the bush. At large! Escaped lunatic! Has éelusion he is village constable! Shoots at automobile parties! GAS. You want it. I have it. Come get it. Five miles to it. GARAGE, The Catskill Road House under new management. No Gentiles accommo- dated. AUTOMOBILERS. This Road's Like Luv, Purty Rocky on Ahead. STOP, LOOK AND LISTEN, WELL! The road beyond is worse than HELL. Honeymooning in the ferry boat next week, The island is yours. Jonata Jones, Ferryman. RRY This Hear Ferry Broke Down Till |HE Hank McNeal Sobers Up Ls Signal, ferry boat with $10 bill, If it does not come, try $20. Rrwarp! To first’ person leaving pair of trousers here. Whistle twice. Met skunk last night Dear Friends, Go Back! Skunks in the Bungalow ! We Have Fled. Joe axp Mary. I took the gasolean—I hadn't orter— And also took your dorter. ANK, THE SiorFer. Patronizing Visitor: WMaAT’s THAT GROWING THERE, MY yRIEND? Texas Farmer: STRAW MATS FOR NEW YORK. Medieval History OBODY has ever yet satisfactorily explained why professors are en- gaged to teach medieval history to col- lege students. There are three major objections to medieval history: (1) It isn’t true, (2) it isn’t interesting and (3) it is of no value. But even if it were all of these things, the college student is far from realizing it and leaves the in- stitution with no knowledge on the subject that he can talk about for five consecutive minutes. The most he carries away with him is a confused jumble of Goths, and Visigoths, and Huns, and Vandals, and Diets, and Papal Bulls, and Charles the Ham- mers, and James the Maniacals, and Thomas the Coleries, and William the Dyspeptics, and so on throughout the entire gamut of pathology. He knows that they were fighting all the time. that the map changed every other Wednesday and that the kings and knights and princes and barons and other personages remind him of a kaleidoscope hitched to a perpetual motion machine. But he doesn’t know what it’s all about When middle-aged professors « more than middle-aged colleges at- tempt to make head or tail of the con- glomeration or in; interest into the meager and questionable details that have trickled down to us from the Middle Ages, they come about as near wasting the time their students and the money of their endowers as can he imagined. E. 0.4. Good News for Some Animals Dr. Do: the noted French surgeon, has caused surprise by tak- ing the stand that the yearly slaugh- ter in the laboratories of thousands of guinea pigs, rabbits, cats, micc and dogs produces practically no advance in the science of treating human disease. “T consider it a grave error to study human therapeutics through little animals, The tuberculosis of 2 pigs is no more that of man n is the cancer in mice the ne as cancer in a human_ being Journal of Zoophily. ERY tactless of Dr. Doyen. He might show more considera- tion for those other vivisectors whose discoveries of cure for both cancer and tuberculosis have become a_ standing joke. comicbooks.com