Life, 1914-12-03 · page 40 of 92
Life — December 3, 1914 — page 40: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains three separate satirical pieces typical of early 20th-century Life magazine humor: **Top cartoon**: A Don Quixote literary tribute—a poem celebrating the classic novel, accompanying an illustration of the delusional knight on his horse. This appears to be inspired by receiving a bottle of sherry wine bearing the same name. **Middle cartoons**: Two Christmas-themed jokes. The first mocks the "grafting process" for loading Christmas trees—likely a pun on agricultural grafting applied absurdly to holiday decoration. The second ridicules Christian Science's practice of "absent treatment" (spiritual healing conducted remotely), suggesting someone wants Santa to magically benefit their family without material gifts. **Bottom cartoon**: Satirizes the difficulty of selecting meaningful Christmas presents, showing a mother and son discussing a father's gift—playing on the common complaint that wealthy or satisfied men need nothing material. The page exemplifies Life's satire of contemporary fads (Christian Science), literary pretension, and middle-class consumer culture around Christmas.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Uy ere Boy (waving): MERRY CHRISTMAS, BERTIE! “awl MERRY CHRISTMAS YOURSELF.” OST: How do you get your Christmas tree so loaded down? Parker: It’s done by the grafting process. Santa Claus: pean ME! HERE'S A LETTER FROM A CHRISTIAN SCIENTIST. WANTS ME TO GIVE HIS FAMILY ABSENT TREATMENT THIS YEAR “tin LIFE ara opp Don Quixote Lines Written After Receiving from a Friend a Bottle of Sherry Wine of the Same Name as the Above. HAT “blushful Hippocrene” is here! what fire Of the warm South with magic of old Spain! Through which again I seem to view the train Of all Cervantes’ dreams, his heart's desire, The melancholy Knight, in gaunt attire Of steel, rides by upon the windmill-plain, With Sancho Panza on his ass again, While, far away, a swineherd from a byre Winds a hoarse horn, And all at once I see The glory of that soul who rode upon Impossible quests, following a deathless dream Of righted wrongs—that never were to be— Like many another champion, who has gone Questing a cause that perished like a gleam. Madison Cawein, ~K Chistrias. — WHAT HE WANTS “t's sO HARD, MATER, TO THINK OF ANYTHING FATHER WOULD LIKE FOR CHRISTMAS”