Life, 1915-08-26 · page 34 of 48
Life — August 26, 1915 — page 34: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains three humorous pieces satirizing early 1900s American life: **"Confidential Suburban Guide"** mocks social dynamics among car owners. The satire targets how automobile ownership changed social hierarchies—suddenly people who never socialized before now seek rides, uninvited guests impose themselves, and those without cars either fish for invitations or avoid the car owner entirely. The "lady who loves your chauffeur" suggests romantic complications servants introduce. **"A Revolution Coming?"** ironically proposes licensing musicians to control public performance. The joke is that amateur musicians plague their audiences with unbearable playing, yet unlike amateur writers (who suffer silently), musicians inflict their incompetence on the world. The author sarcastically suggests amateurs should be "restrained...as painlessly as possible"—dark humor about muting bad musicians. **"Nails"** is domestic humor: every house contains countless nails, yet when one is actually needed, none can be found or they're crooked. The absurdist observation that straightening a nail on mahogany furniture with a poker (lacking a hammer) represents helpless domesticity. The **courtship sofa illustrations** advertise furniture with suggestive designs for courting couples.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
HUNTING THE Woovcock Confidential Suburban Guide To People You Come to Know After You Have Purchased a New Auto HE lady who says she can’t tell you how many times she has telephoned for a taxi to take her to the country club, only to have to countermand the order because somebody asked her to go in her car. But she intends always to keep right on, just the same. The lady who calls your wife up and asks if you are possibly going to the Smith’s reception, and if— The man who never would play golf with you before, but who meets you cordially as you step off the eighteenth green and asks you if you can “carry home one more.” The old friend who tells somebody else that somehow you seem different from what you were. The fat couple that you seem always to be meeting and who plank themselves down in the rear seat after you have invited four others. The thin couple wno never accept your invitation. Your solicitous relative who morbidly tells you that he hopes “you can always have a car” (implying that he doesn't think so) and then concludes he will stay on another week. The Only One You Do Not Come To Know The lady who loves your chauffeur. A Revolution Coming? i scems that practicing musicians may soon be under the control of the law, and before rei ing a license to perform in public will have to pass an examination, People will, however, still learn how to play musical instruments. It is the business of learning that causes so much wide-spread suffering. The army of amateur writers perform their work in silence, the patient editor being their only victim. But the amateur musician has the world for his oyster. If there is going to be control of public musicians, the amateur should [kewise be restrained, Amateur musicians who lack talent and have only assurance and boundless energy should be put out of harm’s way as painlessly as possible, Nails A NAIL is a common article of manufacture which is turned out by thousands every hour in the factory, and is always absent in every household when it is most needed. Every house is full of nails, The walls bristle with them, The floors and ceilings are full of them; but if you need one to drive into a wall or to help dispatch a box going by express, you might as well look for a gold nugget in an ash-heap. When by some miracle a nail permits itself to be dis- covered, it is always crooked. The art of placing it on your wife’s best mahogany table and straightening it out with a poker—in place of the hammer you cannot locate— is an art yet in its infancy. Some centuries hence it may reach a development hitherto undreamed of. | | [tn SUH HI nn wil ATTA CTT ; FOR BASHFUL SUITORS THE NEW COURTSHIP SOFA comicbooks.com