Life, 1914-04-09 · page 14 of 40
Life — April 9, 1914 — page 14: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
The main piece satirizes a neglectful husband managing household tasks alone after his wife leaves—he munches cigars nervously, struggles with bedmaking, finds random items in the cellar, discovers his incompetence at domestic work, and fantasizes about suicide. The satire mocks both male helplessness at housework and suggests marital discord. Below, "Modified" jokes about a child's prayer rewritten to be materialistic after her father buys a car—"Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who try to pass us!"—satirizing automobile culture and consumer values corrupting childhood piety. "Sweet Unconsciousness" critiques Alabama's labor practices, while an illustration at bottom depicts a woman preferring "lava" to a suitor—unclear specific reference without fuller context.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
646 Diary of an Abandoned Husband ONDAY: I munched cigars all day! I'm getting intensely nerv: ous, but I intend to keep up a stout heart. Tuespay: Slept but little last night, the sheets getting over my head and tying themselves into knots. Some- times I long to know how to make up a bed. Weonespay: A splendid morning. Found a bottle of beer and scooped out an Edam cheese under the cellar stairs. Puurspay: Dust everywhere, = I imagine [ am an upstairs girl, and am actually learning to like it. Found an old potato in the gas-stove oven. Fripay: Pulled down all the curtains to-day for exercise, Found the key of the linen closet—a towel! Saturpay: Believe I am going mad. Tried to lay a carpet. Sunpay: Dreamed I was a suffra- gette. Just found enough picture- wire to hang myself with, Before I go—Ha! Ha! I shall turn up the corner of every rug in tke house. That always annoyed her most. Modified THe week after her father bought an automobile, Julia, aged five, “ Forgive forgive those 1 said her prayer like th US OUF Lrespasses as V who try to pass us!” PHOTOGRAPHIC TERM AN OVER-EXPOSED NEGATIVE TOORIN’-CAR I AST HIM WA‘ vOUR bIRT’pAy??” Sweet Unconsciousness = picked it up hopefully, read it with care—that marked copy of the Anglo-Saxon, of Alabama, which some one sent us the other day. It was a sprightly little sheet, and seemed to teem with passionate interest in the welfare of Alabama, her shortcomings, her needs, her problems, her possibili- ties. There was a three-column article in particular, setting forth what Ala- bama would have to do to keep up with “ progressive times”. Alas! poor hope was once more doomed to disappointment. In all those “SAY, KID, LISTEN WERE, W'EN I HEARD HE'D GIVE FOXIE BRIGHTEYES A ‘'T HE GOIN’ TO DO SOMETHIN’ FOR ME. ‘SURE,’ ‘SURE, DOTTIE ’—JUST ILIKE THAT—' A AUTO-TRUCK FOR YOURS,’ HE pages there was not a word to indicate that Alabama has a child-labor prob- lem, not to mention that it is the worst State in the Union in that respect. It would be bromidic and platitudinous to say, “Isn't it strange such a thing should be overlooked?” But isn’t it? SPHERE was a young lady in Java Who said that she surely must hava Sleigh-ride with her beau In the beautiful snean, But he said: “I am more used to lava.” comicbooks.com