Life, 1917-08-30 · page 22 of 40
Life — August 30, 1917 — page 22: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains satirical commentary and advertisements typical of Life's early 20th-century format. **Main Content:** - **"We Need Him"**: Urges Luther Burbank, the famous horticulturist, to recover quickly from illness. It references his breeding of a high-yield wheat variety (fifty to seventy bushels per acre vs. fifteen to twenty), presenting him as essential to wartime food production. The context suggests WWI-era concerns about agricultural output. - **"What Stumped Him"**: A humorous poem about a mathematician who can solve complex problems—cube roots, celestial mechanics, even straighten his wife's checkbook—but cannot figure out income tax returns. This satirizes the Byzantine complexity of early American tax codes. - **"Modern Confessions"**: A confession piece where the narrator admits loving Brooklyn despite adopting a cynical pose around others, ultimately declaring himself Brooklyn's only honest resident. **Advertisements** include Jack Robinson gloves, a canoe product, hunting dogs, and a rifle. The tone reflects Life's characteristic blend of patriotic concern, mathematical humor, and metropolitan social observation.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
“Pas Manos Mase Quen Woon’ ~~ / ee rue | burst while youire putting them | on. “The Fingers will out~ | A Story from the Front NE day an ammunition dump blew Cordite was blazing, shells and bombs bursting, and splinters and whole shells flying everywhere in the vicinity. The atmosphere was full of smoke and resounding with metallic whines. Out of a shuck hard by came a darky, loaded to the waterline with kit, Dlankets, rifle, ete, and up the road he dangled. “Here! Where are you going?” shouted an officer. “T ain't goin’, suh,” darky. “I'se gone.” We Need Him UT your car to the ground and panted the listen for word about Luther Burbank He was ill in the early part of Au- gust. That was excusable, but un- timely. If it is true that he has bred a new variety of wheat, which pro- duces fifty to seventy bushels to the acre instead of fifteen to twenty bush- cls as common wheat does, we can- not spare him the time just now for an extended illness. Get well: get busy, Mr. Burbank. KI. you & success or do you still lic to your wife? L GE Advertisements You Have Never DOWN-SHE-GOES QUICK-TILTING- CANOE. Buy one and look for a wet summer Hardy, Strong And Reliable Specimens OF Best American Strains. “Also A 5) , FINE ASSORTMENT OF \ E DOUBTFUL PUPS, & Nine ANCESTAY PORTURATELY UNKNOWN Heby- Roo Kennel, Stott Mik What Stumped Him CUBE ROOT was a simple thing For him to calculate; How many cents would belt the earth He could clucidate. The fourth dimension he had found The softest snap in life, And he could even straighten out The check-book of his wife. With ease he tracked a comet's course, The path that it should burn, But lost his reason making out \n income tax return MeLandburgh Wilson ‘a NEMESIS. the reactionary rifle.~ ~ Modern Confessions HE words that follow are so extra- ordinary that by many they will not be eved. Yet they are truce. I have a passion for Brooklyn. One moment, please. This is a strange world. As one grows older one becomes more tolerant. Do not judge me hastily. For years I have lived in Brooklyn voluntarily. Many a time I have stood on the corner of Hicks and Mor Streets, sober, and said to myself: gue “y would not go clsewhere if I could.” Once another man who lived in and whom I knew—said to me: “It's pretty bad, isn’t it?” He said it lightly; with him it was a jest. And I, in my weakness, agreed with him. From that moment he thought that I did not like Brooklyn. Others spoke to me in the same tone. And, weak creature that Lo was, 1 agreed with them. Thus, little by little, I came to have the reputation of man who didn’t like the place I lived in. And I really loved Brooklyn. I feel better now, I have told the And [have the proud consciousness that Lam the on!y man 3rooklyn a cynic, of a all the time, in my scerct soul, truth for once. who lives in Brooklyn who has dared to utter the truth, ee comicbooks.omg