Life, 1916-06-29 · page 26 of 41
Life — June 29, 1916 — page 26: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page introduces **Brand Whitlock**, who served as U.S. Minister to Belgium. The introductory essay praises him as a rare "moral hero"—a man of restraint, modesty, and genuine accomplishment who doesn't boast about his good deeds. The author notes Whitlock's background as an Ohio lawyer, Chicago reporter, and Toledo mayor known for effective reform. The cartoons and poems below are typical Life magazine filler content unrelated to Whitlock: - **"A Passing Circumstance"**: A sentimental poem about a pretty girl passing by - **"In Doubt"**: A joke about uncertainty over whether a theater show is "good bad" or "bad good" - **"No Mermaid, at That"**: A pun about a woman in the "rolling forties" (both age and ocean waters) - **The illustration**: Shows children playing, with a nurse telling them to kiss and go home The page exemplifies early 20th-century American humor—genteel, mildly risqué, and focused on social manners.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
1226 We Have with Us Brand Whitlock HE man to whom I am now about to introduce you has one of the most remarkably un-American faculties known to mankind; he has discovered secret of when to keep silence. He can talk when he wants to, and when he does talk, what he says does not cause trouble to anybody. Where did he get this? In Urbana, Ohio, where he was born? Did he achieve it when he was a reporter on the Chicago Her- ald in 1887, when he became an Ohio lawyer ten years er, or when, as mayor of Toledo, in 1903, he estab- lished the fact that it takes a really sane man to become an ef- fective reformer? I do not know. All I know is that he has it, and he has—I am bound to confess~ other things besides. He is mod- est. He is sane. He has the true literary touch, He has human sympathy. He has courage. But perhaps above all things else, he has the sublime faculty of not abusing the privilege of being a moral hero. Now heroes, like the poor, are al- A Passing Circumstance A CLICK of heels on the hard cement, A flash of blue from the firmament, A flutter of skirts and a fluff of curls, And—pouf! the prettiest of girls Has passed me by! A breath of laughter sweet and lo A firm, yet gently whispered, Leave a heart in pain and a head that whirls, For—pouf! the prettiest of girls Has passed me up! Lucene Leonette Goodeno: In Doubt ‘T a couple of good tickets to this show to-night. Don’t you want to gO? “Ts it a good bad show, or a bad good show?” “I really can't say. It may be in- decently meritorious or meritoriously ways with us. But they differ in kind. We are all of us heroes in the sense that we are alive. But this good fel- low here—he is a sort of unconscious hero; a hero by proxy, so to speak, to a whole people. And how those people love him! He came to them when they appear almost to have been abandoned hy the world, and when the supreme tragedy of all history was marking them for its victims; he came to them and solaced them, and stood by them, and labored for them as no man has labored for others for many a long day; and you would never know, even from what he doesn’t say, that he had ever done anything much. I want you all to meet him. He's abrick. May he never be spoiled by fickle Fortune or be removed from the lap of true Modesty. Ladies and gentlemen, I have the honor to present our Minister to Bel- gium, Brand Whitlock. No Mermaid, at That “AH! There goes one of the mid-ocean ladies!” “ Wha’ je mean?” “Oh, she’s in the rolling fortie: Corts Cuag Nursie Ford: Now, CHILDREN, YOU'VE PLAYED ENOUGH; KISS EACH OTHER indecent.” AND RUN ALONG HOME comicbooks.com