Life, 1917-01-11 · page 27 of 38
Life — January 11, 1917 — page 27: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains three satirical pieces typical of Life's humor: 1. **"Surely, There Is Compassion for That Man"**: A domestic comedy about a husband who installs a private closet with a lock, hoping for personal space. When his wife returns and sees the empty space, she immediately claims it for her own clothing, defeating his purpose entirely. The satire targets gender dynamics and marital compromise. 2. **"A Colonel in Affliction"**: Mocks Frank Munsey's editorial opposing increased postal rates on magazines. The joke is that Munsey's self-interested outcry against the rate hike—which would affect his own publications—is presented as emotional advocacy for the "printing press," when he's actually protecting his profit margins. 3. **"His Mite"** and **"We hear that the German fraulein..."**: Brief joke items. The first mocks someone claiming forest conservation by shooting woodpeckers. The second is a pun playing on "Hunny" sounding like "Hun," the contemporary derogatory term for Germans during WWI. The page demonstrates Life's focus on social commentary and wordplay humor.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Surely, There Is Compassion for That Man HERE was once a husband who dreamed of having a closet all his own. He dreamed of a place where he could go at night and find things just the same as they were in the morning. He dreamed of a place which he did not occupy with his timid little two suits, a remote hook, while all the rest of the circumambient space was filled with—well, what-every-hus- band-knows. He dreamed, and he said: “I will take advantage of my wife's absence, and hire a carpenter and a locksmith and fix that closet up to suit myself and put on it an impregnable lock arid key, and then I shall laugh softly and say: ‘At last the great day has come!’ And he did it. And when that night his wife came home and saw the work that he had done, she said: THE FIRST BEAR RAID “Where is that key?” And the husband, trembling—for he was no Bluebeard—produced it forth- with. And when she saw the ample space within she fell on his neck and said: “My darling, the four new frocks I have bought this day, and the crepe de chine party wrap, and the fur-lined mother hubbard and the others—your thoughtfulness has provided for.” And the man went out in the garage and hanged his dress suit there—as he had been wont to do—and sighed to himself, saying, “Good night!” A Colonel in Affliction could hardly have been a dry eye in Frank Munsey when T' he wrote the editorial in the Sun (De- cember 14th) against increasing the rate of postage on magazines. A pro- vision of the post office appropriation bill threatens to do it by taking “all newspapers, magazines and other pub- lications” out of the second class, and hauling them as merchandise or some- thing like it. Colonel Munsey has all the kinds of goods affected —“ newspapers, maga- zines and other publications "— and when he lifts up his voice and cries, “Do not scrap the printing press!" there are real tears in it His Mite T is my belief, and I venture to as- sert it,” declared the lecturer, rais- ing his voice, “there isn’t a man i this audience who has ever done any thing to prevent the destruction of our vast forests. A rather timid-looking man quictly arose in the rear of the hall and said: “T've shot wood-peckers.” WE hear that the German fraulein calls her sweetheart Hunny (If you don’t see this say it aloud!) comicbooks.com