Life — June 12, 1913 — page 7: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# Explanation This page presents "A Hoodooed Sonnet" by Carolyn Wells—a playful poem about the difficulty of writing sonnets while following strict poetic rules. The humorous illustration below depicts a motorcycle accident, with two people in a sidecar that has crashed on a hillside. The cartoon's caption reads: "Good heavens, Mary! Why didn't you put on the brake when I told you to?" / "Because." The joke combines the sonnet's theme about constraints and rules with the illustration's ironic situation: the driver gave explicit instructions ("put on the brake"), yet the passenger did the opposite. The single-word answer "Because" humorously suggests no logical reason exists—pure stubbornness or inexplicable human behavior. The "hoodoo" (bad luck) referenced in the title connects to this consequence of not following rules.