Life, 1914-12-03 · page 31 of 92
Life — December 3, 1914 — page 31: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains two satirical pieces typical of early 20th-century American humor: **"The Real Paul Revere"** mocks the romanticized historical memory of the American Revolutionary figure. The contrasting illustrations—one idealized, one showing an apparently drunk or disorderly figure labeled "The Boston Tea Potty"—suggest the gap between heroic mythology and actual historical reality. It's a lighthearted jab at selective national memory-making. **"A Capital Offense"** humorously traces the derby hat's decline from practical medieval armor to modern fashion liability. The piece satirizes how modern men's hats serve no protective purpose yet remain socially obligatory. The joke culminates in the absurd image of men removing hats to impress young women while catching pneumonia in freezing weather—suggesting hat-wearing customs are driven by vanity rather than sense, and have literally caused male baldness over generations. Both pieces exemplify Life's satirical approach: deflating pretension through exaggerated logic and historical comparison.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
THE REAL PAUL REVERE (WHOSE MEMORY WE ARE REVERING) THE BOSTON TEA The Avoidance of the Brain IX these days the Brain increases (if it increases at all) not so much by what it feeds upon as by what it avoids. In the same sense that char- acter is said to be resisted temptation, so it may be said that the Brain de- velops through resisted information. The Brain is steered by the’ will. It becomes a matter of great skill for the will to determine what is good for the Brain and just how much informa- tion it can take aboard to make it stable enough to keep its proper course. Information is little else but ballast. Many Brains are water- logged. A Capital Offense HY do men wear hats? If one looks at the matter from a strictly unprejudiced standpoint, this question will be found difficult to an- swer. It becomes increasingly difficult when one considers the kind of hats that men wear. Probably the derby hat is a decadent descendant of the original helmet. The helmet, made frequently of burnished steel or copper, served a useful pur- pos Many a knight kept himself alive by the judicious and regular use of a helmet, which served as pro- tection against the repeated blows of a club in the hands of some total stranger. Sleeping in a helmet at night, so that any one who happened to stray your way with an axe would have to cut through two or three inches of iron before he could reach your gray mat- ter, was not an unpleasant pastime, especially as it served to dispel in- somnia. When one got used to drop- ping off anywhere, with a twenty-five- pound helmet firmly lashed under his chin, no ordinary noise or disturbance would: wake him. A man with a helmet worn on top of a suit of durable armor could come home from the club at almost any hour of the night and be fairly safe from his wife. Now the most he can do is to place his derby or silk hat care- fully over the bathroom faucet, hop- ing that before dawn some kind hand will remove it to a place of safety. Some people think that hats are worn to preserve the health, but this is not altogether true. A middle-aged married man will tip his hat gingerly to a female relative; he will take it off and put it back again to the wife of a friend; but when he meets a sixteen- year-old chorus girl, he will remove it, with the thermometer below zero, while he catches pneumonia, bronchitis, and other fatal diseases, without a qualm, Tt has required but a few genera- tions of hat-wearing to make men bald. A bald-headed man in a Chesterfield overcoat, trying to keep a silk hat on in a snowstorm is the result of ages of experiment in the manufacture of human beings, comicbooks.com