Life, 1912-12-26 · page 37 of 41
Life — December 26, 1912 — page 37: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page combines satirical editorial content with period advertisements. The main feature, "The Miss Who Saves the Miles," is a **railroad advertisement** for the Pennsylvania Railroad, using a stylized illustration of a fashionable woman traveler to promote routes between New York, Chicago, and St. Louis. The left column reprints a **satirical essay** (likely from an earlier source, possibly Jonathan Swift or similar) mocking women's marriage clubs—organizations where unmarried women supposedly strategize about managing husbands and lovers. The piece's humor relies on portraying women as cunning "Machiavels" who manipulate men through various domestic stratagems. Below sits a brief joke about marital punctuality: a wife complains her husband arrived at 8:30 when expected at 5:00. The page exemplifies early 20th-century *Life* magazine's format: mixing literary reprints, advertisements masquerading as editorial content, and brief domestic humor targeting middle-class anxieties about marriage and gender roles. Modern readers would recognize this as selling products through gendered stereotypes and satirizing women's agency through faux-historical commentary.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
—_—_ solu- s of club- their | the see- ould ound vrate But they you, 13 novel oun- janu- ner's iction | place House ome,” oo Th e These won- rf life se in- | t and . the ad to ment. rough orary | y dis- great ppear tand- ry be para- dards aried edge. uch- will weep so much for the loss of a husband as for the want of one. “The principal rule by which the whole society are to govern themselves is this: To cry up the pleasures of a single life upon all occasions, in order to deter the rest of their sex from mar- riage, and engross the whole male world to themselves, “They are obliged, when any one makes love to a member of the society. to communicate his name, at which tin the whole assembly sit upon his reput tion, person, fortune, and good-humo and if they find him qualified for a sister of the club, they lay their heads together how to make him sure. By this means they are acquainted with all the widow hunters about town, who often afford them great diversion. There is an hon- est Irish gentleman, it seems, who knows nothing of this society, but at different times has made love to the whole club. “Their conversation often turns upon their former husbands, and it is very diverting to hear them relate their sev- eral arts and stratagems with which they amused the jealous, pacified the choleric, or wheedled the good-natured man, till at last, to use the club-phrase, they sent him out of the house with his heels fore- most. “The politics which are most culti- vated by this society of she-Machiavels relate chiefly to these two points: how to treat a lover, and how to manage a husband. As for the first set of artifices, they are too numerous to come within An Important Water Color Exhibition of Scenes in Lower and Upper Egypt by the late Henry Bacon will be held at the Montross. Galleries, 550 Fifth Ave., from December Eleventh to January First. The Miss Who Saves the Miles APO PEN Is the one who takes the shortest route between New York ant Chicago AND New York ant St. Louis To Chicago, she has the choice of the “BROADWAY LIMITED,” the 20-hour train; “THE PEN YLVANIA LIMITED,” the original Train de Luxe, and the “CHICAGO LIMITED.” The “‘24-HOUR ST. LOUIS” is the fast train to the Mississippi Valley. The Short Route is the NSYLVANIA RAILROAD the compass of your paper, and shall therefore be reserved for a second letter. “The management of a husband is built upon the following doctrines, which are universally assented to by the whole club: Not to give him his head at first. Not to allow him too great freedoms and familiarities. Not to be treated by him like a raw girl, but as a woman that knows the world. Not to lessen anything of her former figure. To celebrate the generosity or any other virtue of a de- ceased husband, which she would recom- mend to his successor. To turn away all his old friends and servants, that she may have the dear man to herself. To make him disinherit the undutiful chil- dren of any former wife. Never to be thoroughly convinced of his affection till he has made over to her all his goods and chattels. “ After so long a letter, I am, without more ceremony, “Your humble servant, &c.” “ Mew are always late. I have waited here since seven o'clock for my husband to come; now it is half after eight.” “ And“when were you to meet him?” “At five o'clock."—Lustige Blatter. 2553 AHappy Marriage Depends largely on a know!- elge of the whole truth about self and sex an felation to life and . This knowledge does not come intellizently of itself, nor correctly from ordinary, every-day sources. SEXOLOGY (Uilustr ated) by Wiliam H. Wolting, A.M. M.D. imparts in a clear, wholesome way in one volume to Her Daughter, i Have. Puritan Pub. Co., 776 Perry Bldg., Phila., Pa. G GRAINS “MADE AT KEY WEST NTS ‘Pee keteityen chewed Hw te comicbooks.com