Life, 1916-04-20 · page 4 of 52
Life — April 20, 1916 — page 4: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains two elements: 1. **Top cartoon "Thirty Minutes for Refreshments"**: Shows a railway station kiosk labeled "LIFE" with passengers boarding a train. It's advertising the magazine as convenient reading material during travel stops—a common sales pitch when train travel was standard. 2. **Main article "Does This Ever Happen to You?"**: A relatable humor piece about newspaper subscription procrastination. The text describes someone intending to subscribe but repeatedly delaying, then being embarrassed when asked if they've seen a particular article. The illustrated figure (appearing flustered or guilty) reinforces the comedic awkwardness of the situation. The "Embarrassing" note at bottom references a postponed Eden Number issue. This reflects early-20th-century magazine marketing and social etiquette around reading subscriptions.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
vr “MN SIRE Embarrassi. g We have had to postpone indefinitely the Garden of Eden Number, which was to have been next week’s issue. It is all ready, full of the latest news from the Garden of Eden—and other things. But we hesitate, somehow, to issue it. It’s too good. “THIRTY MINUTES FOR REFRESHMENTS” Does This Ever Happen to You? Subscribing to one’s favorite paper is not always so easy as it seems. You intend to do it, of course. Indeed, nothing is more certain. But you wait from week to weck in the vain, elusive hope that, possibly, in some mysterious manner, someone else will do it for you. Meanwhile you keep praising the paper to your friends, telling them you couldn’t possibly do without it. One day you miss your copy—perhaps the news-stand has sold out, or you forget—then someone asks you if you saw that awfully good thing, etc. You haven't. You blame the paper. You blame everybody but yourself. Suddenly you wake up, take five minutes off, make out your check, mail it, and— / f In the spring it behooves every good fellow to obey that impulse. LIFE, 17 West 31st Street, New York. Js ial JL Enclosed J find One Dol- / lar (Canadian $1.13, Foreign $1.28). Send Live for three months to Open only to new subscribers; no sub: scriptions renewed at this rate. au One Year, $5.00. (Canadian, $5.52; Foreign, $6.04.) comicbooks.com