Life, 1914-07-23 · page 27 of 40
Life — July 23, 1914 — page 27: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains three distinct satirical pieces: **"A Lost Art"** laments the decline of vituperative newspaper editorials—editors once hurled elaborate insults at each other, but at least understood their subject matter. The piece nostalgia-tinged criticizes modern journalism's loss of this rhetorical tradition. **"This Picture, and That"** depicts marital discord. A disillusioned bride complains her husband no longer eagerly retrieves her dropped handkerchief. His response blames her demands for "clubs and suffragism" (women's voting rights)—suggesting she traded romantic courtship for political assertion. The "moral" acknowledges both perspectives, though the joke satirizes post-marriage disillusionment and the contemporary women's suffrage movement's impact on gender relations. **The servants' dialogue** jokes that one woman sources servants from "Europe, Asia and Africa"—implying global recruitment of immigrant domestic workers, likely satirizing wealthy households' employment practices during an era of heavy immigration. These pieces reflect early-1900s concerns: journalism standards, suffrage debates, and labor migration patterns.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
IF YOU ARE CARR’ A Lost Art Au signs indicate that the printed vituperative words hurled at each other by newspaper editors were the product of an art which, if not already lost, is rapidly becoming so. One doesn’t have to be very old to remember the high excellence formerly attained in manufacturing picturesque but uncomplimentary epithets and hurling them back and forth at one another. We bid good-bye to this vituperative phase of American journalism with little regret, but it had this advantage at least: When editors thus attacked cach other, they usually knew what they were talking about. G ON TWO FLIRTATIONS AT ONCE DON’T GIVE ONE OF THE FAIR ONES YOUR DOG This Picture, and That ISILLUSIONED BRIDE: When I formerly dropped my handkerchief, how eagerly you used to spring to catch it. Now I have to pick it up myself. Alas, what a change a wedding ceremony will make! Discrunttep Hupsy: There's a reason, my dear; when I asked you for the bread of domestic happiness you handed me the stone of clubs and suffragism! Moral—There are always two sides. RS. HATTERSON: I've just been trying a new servants’ agency. Where do you get yours? Mrs. Catterson: Europe, Asia and Africa. comicbooks.com