Life, 1917-02-08 · page 15 of 42
Life — February 8, 1917 — page 15: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page satirizes **B. Porkington Packer**, a character described as someone who has "several times succeeded in being mistaken for an Englishman." The illustration shows well-dressed figures on horseback in what appears to be a refined social setting. The satire centers on **class pretension**: Packer is mocked for attempting to adopt English mannerisms and aristocratic behavior to seem sophisticated. The text reveals he discriminates against poor people while favoring the wealthy, embodying hypocrisy about social justice. The secondary column discusses **suffragettes' silent protests** at the White House, calling this tactic "silly and suffragetical." The author argues their silence, while dramatic, offers no persuasive benefit to their cause—satirizing both the protesters and dismissive responses to women's political activism.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
GREAT AMERICANS B, PORKINGTON PACKER, WHO HAS SEVERAL TIMES SUCCEEDED IN BEING MISTAKEN FOR AN ENGLISHMAN morning, and showed his teeth and growled and made a big fuss until everybody came around, and then he began telling about Grandma Law. He said terrible things about her. He said that she war not only a back number, founded on a lot of fossilized prece- dents, but was positively dishonest and had grown into the very incarnation of injustice ; that she discriminated con- stantly in favor of the rich against the poor; in short, she was quite impos- sible. “Grandma Law was very angry. She came out and ordered him away. “He went away, and met a Referen- dum. The Referendum called the Fox- trotter, and the Fox-trotter got all of the rest of the boys and girls in the neighborhood together, and they said: “*Unless Grandma Law gets a move on her we'll beat her up” “And they assembled in front of her house; and she came out again, “*Go away, you bad boys and girls,’ she said. ‘Don’t you know who I am? 215 I am the most revered and dignified person in town, I am steeped in tra- dition, and to attempt to change me is a high crime. Better go away.” “ And what do you suppose those bad little boys and girls did? They actu- ally took Grandma Law out with them; they just grabbed her and dragged her off to a modern dressmaker'’s. And they bought her the swellest outfit, and whisked her off to the ball, and made her dance the half-step with Fox-trot- ter, and she actually rode in a Com- mission airship, and peroxided her hair, and wore velvet slippers, and sang rag- time, and ordered new plumbing in the house, and tried to be gentle and cour- teous and fair to everybody, and, in fact, became so thoroughly up-to-date that nobody knew her.” “Wasn't she awful mad,” asked Bright Eyes, “when they made her do all those things?” “That’s the funny part of it,” re- plied Mr. Oracle. “No, she wasn't. She did them all, without any com- plaint; but at the end of the day what do you suppose she said?” “Oh, please, Mr. Oracle, what did she say?” “She said, as she put on all her old things again, and then went back into her tumbled-down house: “*Welll It was rather amusing, but I'm too old to change. It will take a special session of Congress and a revo- lution of the plain people to make me over, permanently.’” That Compensatory Silence HERE has been much criticism of the suffragettes for posting silent sentinels about the White House in order to impress the President with the importance of the movement. Verily, it is a silly and suffragetical performance, but let us pause and ex- tract what consolation we can out of the fact that these sentinels are silent. These sentinels are women, and they are silent. Is there a blessed chance that this silence will become con- tagious, not only among suffragettes, but among women in general? It is a splendid thought, but only the most incorrigible of optimists will dare to entertain it. BAscains show which way the woman goes, comicbooks.com