Life, 1916-12-07 · page 83 of 94
Life — December 7, 1916 — page 83: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is primarily a **tobacco advertisement**, not satire. It's a Velvet brand cigarette/pipe tobacco ad from Life magazine's Christmas issue (page 1067). The image shows an elderly gentleman with a pipe, holding a tin of Velvet tobacco as a Christmas gift. The ad employs sentimentalist messaging typical of early 20th-century advertising: tobacco as a symbol of friendship and good will. **Key claims made:** - Velvet is "superior tobacco" aged two years in wooden hogsheads using "Nature's own method" - It won the Grand Prix at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition (suggesting prestige/awards) - It's positioned as an appropriate holiday gift between friends **What's notable to modern readers:** The advertisement freely promotes tobacco without health warnings, frames smoking as wholesome friendship-building, and targets gift-giving occasions—all practices now prohibited in most Western countries. The poetic verse and emphasis on "nature" reflects early advertising strategies before tobacco's dangers were widely acknowledged or regulated.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Take this gift of good tobacco As a pledge of friendship true, In its fragrance find good wishes That the giver sends to you, And may nothing come be- tween us But the smoke as it ascent May _ the friendliness in VELVET Make us ever warmer friends. apne Only Nature Can Make Tobacco Friendly VELVET is the best Kentucky Burley tobacco, mellowed and improved by two years’ ageing in wooden hogsheads—Nature’s own method, the patient method, the most expensive method, but the best method known to man. Pipe smokers tell us that by comparison and every test VELVET is superior tobacco, and the International Jury of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition awarded the GRAND PRIX to VELVET, the highest award ever given to any smoking tobacco. A Holiday Humidor of \ very symbol of good-will—the |