Life, 1917-02-15 · page 23 of 42
Life — February 15, 1917 — page 23: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page depicts cherubs engaged in various "love-making" activities presented as recipes or chemical processes. The captions—"Testing Doves to Rhyme with Loves," "Asphyxiating Bombs for Chaperons," "Distilling Absence (for Weak Hearts)," and "Testing Heart-Entanglements"—satirize romantic sentimentality and courtship rituals. The cartoon mocks Victorian-era romance conventions by treating love as a scientific or culinary endeavor. References to "chaperons" and "weak hearts" target period anxieties about proper courtship. The cherub imagery invokes traditional love symbolism (Cupid) while the pseudo-scientific framing ridicules how overwrought and artificial romance had become in popular culture and literature.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
S N TK j C7 xX ( ay \ \. wir ke ee } \ 4 We 4 is gh a ow ae ning, Doves fo rhyme wh L As Sphyx paling bombs a CRaperon'S 7 } at lie Q “Absence es Weak Hea. rts J10227 - sey merl§ comicbooks.com