Life, 1916-12-07 · page 6 of 94
Life — December 7, 1916 — page 6: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
**The Cartoon: "A Believer in Signs"** This satirical illustration depicts a shopkeeper displaying a sign reading "Do Your Xmas Shopping Early" while appearing to sleep or be negligent at the counter. A small dog lies on the floor nearby, suggesting disorder or inattention. The joke targets retail merchants who promote early Christmas shopping while seeming unprepared or disorganized themselves—a contradiction between their commercial messaging and actual business practices. The sleeping figure and messy shop underscore the irony: the shopkeeper urges customers to shop early yet appears incapable of proper service. This reflects early 20th-century consumer culture tensions, where merchants increasingly used persuasive signage to drive sales, sometimes with dubious sincerity about customer welfare or operational readiness.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
-CHRISTMAS LIFE- A BELIEVER IN SIGNS Insufficiency Perhaps not as I once knew love, LOVE so? An all-consuming passion of the soul. Doubt you? In truth. It is a heritage, From all the past affections that have died. Care for you? Oh, my dearest, with a great, Protecting tenderness, the sympathy And human longings that are unfulfilled, With the last passion of an empty heart! Our Men's Sufferance Column (Two Hundred Years Hence) R. A. SQUIBLEY SPEERS demanded that his wife go out yesterday afternoon and let him take care of the baby. Upon her stern refusal he flew into a passion, grabbed the crib and broke it into a hundred pieces, and then tried to destroy the garage with a new tin hatchet. Mr. Pumpdyke Buncomb took advantage of his wife's absence yesterday afternoon and evening and stole into his house and cooked the dinner, set the table, and was busily engaged in washing the dishes, when she came home unexpectedly and requested him to perform his normal functions, which consisted of putting his feet on the mantelpiece, smoking a large cigar and reading the evening paper. He immediately left the house and called a meet- ing of some of his companions, and they proceeded to the town hall, which they blew up with dynamite. Mr. Bun- comb is now being forcibly fed by three buxom young ladies employed for the purpose. Mr. G. Percy Mutt applied for the position of chamber- maid and waitress at the house of one of our leading resi- dents on Wednesday, and when his request for employ- ment was politely refused he went out to the local garage, secured a hve-gallon can of gasoline and set fire to the house of the innocent lady who had turned him down. The authorities were at first inclined to put him into jail, but when he explained that he was doing this on principle because he believed in the rights of mankind in general, he was fined thirty cents, and the judge and he indulged in an ice-cream soda, to show that there were no hard feelings. Mr. Banger Stilt entered the local post office yesterday, and noticing that the postmaster was reading some postal cards which were written by some maie friends of his to each other, he promptly threw a nursing bottle, filled with oxalic acid, at the postmaster’s head, and practically de- stroyed all of the incoming mail, including the comic sup- plements of several Sunday papers. He was confined in the mothers’ club for four hours and was obliged to listen to the lectures. This is the most drastic punishment which has ever been meted out to misguided males. Mr. Billingsgate Hottaire addressed a crowded meeting of belligerent men yesterday in the public square. Among other things he said: “Unless we cook our own meals, make our own beds, nurse our own children, and put hot mustard plasters on our wives when they need this treatment, this govern- ment will have to stop. Are you with me?” “We are with you, now and forever!” came the hearty response. Thereupon the meeting dispersed, after the members had taken the roof off of several buildings and torn up the public roads on their way home, merely to show that the authorities could not have their own way always.