Life, 1916-07-20 · page 19 of 44
Life — July 20, 1916 — page 19: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains three distinct satirical pieces: **"Great Americans" Cartoon**: Mocks a frivolous social fad by crediting "Mrs. S. Blithering Blyter" as the originator of eating ice-cream with a pickle-fork—absurdist humor about meaningless etiquette trends. **"Beware the Tricky Scientist!"**: Satirizes proposed daylight-saving time (appears to reference German practice). The author argues scientists create useless inventions (steam engines, wireless, flying machines) while failing at important problems like government and war. The piece defends the simple pleasure of lying in bed—mocking both scientific "efficiency" and the loss of personal freedom to scheduling. **"I Don't Mean to Be Mean, But—"**: A humorous poem by Arthur J. Goodhart using repetitive structure to assert everyone has room for improvement, culminating in the punchline that some people are genuinely irredeemable in meanness. **"Nautically Speaking" Cartoon**: A maritime pun caption ("She draws considerable water") accompanying a sketch of a woman fishing. The page exemplifies *Life*'s blend of social commentary, gentle mockery of modern conveniences, and light wordplay.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
GREAT AMERICANS MRS, $. BLITIERING BLYTER, CREATOR OF THE FAD FOR EATING ICE-CREAM WITH A PICKLE-FORK Beware the Tricky Scientist! DEADLY scheme for getting peo- ple up earlier in the morning is now being devised by a trained band of scientists, who apparently have nothing else to do but devise methods to make people unhappy. It is so plausible, so logical, so appealing, that we take pleas- ure in warning everybody against it Briefly, it is this: It is a well-known fact that in summer the sun rises earlier than it does in win- ter; but because we have a fixed schedule of hours throughout the year we do not change in our habits. The idea of the scientists therefore—as they speciously put it, along the lines of greatest effi ciency—is to make us all get up a couple of hours earlier in the summer and go to bed a couple of hours later in the evening. This will save light at night and get more work out of us. They tell us it is being practised in Germany. We refuse to accept the proposition. No scientist has ever done any good, They tele- anyway, so far as we can see. have invented steam-engines and phones and wireless and flying-machines and talking-machiftes and a lot of other 107 useless things, and look at us! more nervous than ever! unhappy than ever! We are more brain- The only thing that the scientists haven't tried to teach us, which is really more important than anything else, is how to run our governments and how to stop war. Now they want to de- prive the few of us who have any linger- ing intellects left, of the only remaining pleasure we have, namely, lying abed. We like to lic abed in the morning, and we like to sit up at night under cle tric lights and be as wicked as we know how, with the charm of wickedness taken pretty much out of everything, including girls, For there is nothing much about women that we cannot see for ourselves. We like the sun about half-past eight in the morning. On Sundays about half past nine, Let us be! We are We are more less than ever! I Don’t Mean to Be Mean, But— is no one so tall HERE couldn't be taller; that he There is no one so small that he couldn't be smaller ; There is no one so thin that he couldn't be thinner; There is no one so fat that he needn't have dinner; There is no one so mild that he couldn't be milder; There is no one so wild that he couldn't be wilder; And so on and so forth, this, that and the other, But, just for the fun of it, here goes an- other: There is no one so keen that he couldn't be keener— But there are folks so mean that they couldn't be meaner! Arthur J. Goodhart. ROW Mags NAUTICALLY SPEAKING “ SIE DRAWS CONSIDERABLE WATER” comicbooks.com