Life, 1913-08-14 · page 17 of 40
Life — August 14, 1913 — page 17: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
**Top Cartoon ("The Shepherd and His Eugenic Flock"):** This appears to be satirizing eugenics—the early 20th-century pseudoscience promoting selective breeding. The small dark figure in the center is surrounded by larger men in suits, suggesting manipulation of human reproduction for supposed genetic "improvement." **"The Fable of the Pretty Girl—With Brains":** This satirizes romantic courtship and women's decision-making. A wealthy father rationally investigates three suitors' financial standing and reputation, believing logic should guide his daughter's marriage choice. She ignores his rational analysis and marries an irresponsible "worthless fellow" anyway—the moral being that emotion, not intellect, governs love. **"A Forgotten Standard":** This criticizes American education as overly mechanical and lecture-based, arguing teachers should inspire curiosity rather than simply transfer information into passive students' minds. All three pieces critique how modern society privileges efficiency and rationality over human nature, intuition, and individual development.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
mnw THE SHEPHERD AND HIS EUGENIC FLOCK The Fable of the Pretty Girl—With Brains TERE was pretty girl who loved once a brains. She was loved (among others) by three men. Said the first man: “T cannot possibly live without you. Unless you say ‘Yes’ I shall start for the west coast of Africa and encourage a fever to carry me off.” Said the second man: “Life without you is a desert waste. If you say ‘No,’ and I still live, it will be only from a sense of duty.” Said the third man: “You can- not refuse me! For I shall spend my life in making you supremely happy.” Now, the father of the pretty girl (from whom she had inherited her brains) had placed in the room a dic- tagraph, and when they had gone, he said: “My dear daughter, I knew you would agree with me that these young men should be looked into. I will pro- ceed to do so and will let you know the results.” Later he returned and said: “T find upon careful inquiry, and get- ting a business rating, that each one of them is all right. They all have plenty of money, good standing and you can- not possibly make a mistake.” “Thank you very much, Papa dear,” said the pretty girl (who had brains), “but while you have been looking up these young men, I have gone off and married a perfectly worthless fellow who is reckless, dissipated and cannot even support himself.” Morat. You might just as well not have any brains, when it comes to a love affair. A Forgotten Standard The teacher who really serves his pupils is, we are coming generally to admit, not the man who fills their minds, but the man who opens them. —London Times. EASURED by this ancient stand- ard—which we have come almost to forget—how many teachers have we in America? We find a large proportion of our college professors either giving lectures or writing text-books. Colleges are coming more and more to be great business machines where the natural curiosity of the student is not per- mitted to take root. No student, in- deed, is supposed to find things out for himself. The perfection of our methods of teaching consists in having everything ready at hand. AN appropriate remark— Be mine.” comicbooks.com