Life, 1918-02-28 · page 24 of 40
Life — February 28, 1918 — page 24: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
**The Cartoon ("The Willowbys' Ward"):** Shows a professor attempting to ice skate while onlookers watch. The caption jokes that since he hasn't skated "in years," his ward Molly "suggests a precautionary measure"—likely implying he needs protection or assistance, playing on the physical comedy of an elderly/rusty skater's inevitable mishap. **"Menless Weddings" Article:** This satirical piece argues weddings should exclude men entirely. Written during World War I (referenced explicitly), it mocks how wartime has shifted wedding dynamics: young women now marry soldiers heading to France based on romance rather than parental approval. The author argues fathers have lost all say in whom daughters marry, and that weddings are chaotic, expensive affairs that men wouldn't voluntarily participate in anyway. The satire targets both women's newfound independence in marriage choices and the disruption of traditional family authority caused by wartime. **"Billy Sundae" Section:** An irreverent recipe for yellow journalism—cynically advising combining business interest with scandal-mongering, removing moral restraint, and serving sensationalism before "the gas escapes" (likely a crude joke about public attention/awareness fading).
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
THE WILLOWBYS' WARD. © AS THE PROFESSOR HAS NOT SKATED IN YEARS, MOLLY SUGGESTS A PRECAUTIONARY MEASURE, Menless Weddings UTTING the ban on non-essentials is now in order. Why not eliminate men from weddings? Weddings are purely feminine affairs. They begin with a mild emotional feminine hysteria, gradually increasing to a gale, and finally to a hurricane, leaving nothing but de- struction and unpaid bills in their wake. No man with a spark of manhood in him would have a wedding if he could crawl out of it. He would just get married. A wedding could go on just as well without even the bridegroom. Nobody would miss him. He could be ele- vated through a trap door at the moment the ceremony took place, and immediately thereafter submerged. So far as the nominal head of the household is concerned —that is to say, the bride’s father—there may have been a time in the history of the world when he had something to say about whom his daughter should marry and when. But, since the opening of the war, that has been relegated to the pas His feeble voice, raised falteringly in protest, is lost in the debates about who shall come and what form of indigestion shall be served for the feast. A young girl who has, in her short life, accumulated about as much practical worldly wisdom as a quartermaster general in the Ordnance Department, meets a young man in an allur- ing uniform, who is on his way to France. Before such an accidental meeting the parents are quite helpless. Thus, so far upside down is the world turned, that what in ordinary times would be an incident, now becomes the principal moving force in the lives of two families. Try Our Billy Sundae 'O an eye for business add an ear for scandal and a nose for ne: Remove all reverence from a dash of religion, and stir in lightly, Flavor with assorted acro- batics. Serve before the gas escapes.