Life, 1914-03-05 · page 19 of 60
Life — March 5, 1914 — page 19: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
**Top Cartoon ("Late for Church"):** A crowded subway or train tunnel filled with passengers. The repeated word "SQUEAK" fills the image, depicting the noise of the packed transit system. This satirizes urban commuting chaos and how the noise and congestion make people late for religious obligations—a commentary on modern life's interference with traditional values. **Bottom Cartoon ("Explaining to the Young the Mystery of Sex"):** An adult addresses a group of children seated together, gesturing toward plants or flowers. This is social satire about the awkwardness adults face when discussing sex education with children, using nature/gardening as an indirect teaching method—reflecting early 20th-century prudishness about such topics. **Text Content:** A lengthy critique of magazine binding practices. The author complains that wire binding in publications like *Harper's* and *Century* is uncomfortable and outdated, advocating for cloth-and-gum binding instead. The piece also discusses magazine advertising practices and briefly mentions Thackeray's published letters to Mrs. Brookfield.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
395 Colonel Harvey should pinch his North American R. » together with heavy wires is not explained to his readers. No doubt they will read him at any cost of muscular effort, but he makes it hard. The same wires, set too far into the margin, vex the readers of Harper's Maga. which has to be held open by main strength while you read it. Wire binding is pretty Lad at the best. Some magazines of large circulation, Everybody's, the World's Work, aud doubtless others, have discarded it and use a binding of coarse cloth and gum, which is better; but most of them stick to it, and the Century is as bad as /larper’s, and Seribuer’s and McClure’s almost as had. Supporting the Steel Trust is a good work now that it is so orderl but wire is bad for binding. They used to use it to hold soles onto shoes, but they seem to have gone back to thread and pegs. The magazines might try pegs. Another cruel habit of most of the magazines is to bind stiff-paper “in- serts” in among their advertisements, thus impairing their flexibility, The Encyclopedia Britannica, which, we suppose, is a very commendable publi- cation, has been advertised in this way very extensively for several years. Fastidious magazine readers who w it well, will still rejoice at the ment of its invitations to subseri T was a pity to have published those more intimate letters of Thackeray to Mrs. Brookfield. No real harm is done to either correspondent, but it was. a pity. Thackeray loved women, He was of LATE. FOR CHURCH handsomest of the current periodicals is the Hibbert Journal, which has a dignified and seemly cover, excellent light paper, and a beautiful page, hand- somely printed, and so leaded as to make reading a privilege. The //ibbert is stitched, not skewered. So are the Atlantic Monthly, the Forum and Mr. Holt’s Unpopular Review, which last has very good, light paper and excel- lent print. Probably none of these magazines is a very urgent intruder in the competition for circulation. Why EXPLAINING TO THE YOUNG THE MYSTERY OF SEX comicbooks.com