Life, 1920-04-08 · page 14 of 44
Life — April 8, 1920 — page 14: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains an essay titled "Essays and Essayists" discussing the literary form of the essay. The top illustration shows a cartoon of various animals (appearing to be creatures from Noah's ark) in a playful scene, captioned "MRS. NOAH ADDS THE FEMININE TOUCH" — a humorous reference to domesticity improving a rough situation. Below is a sketch showing two figures in what appears to be an interior scene, accompanying a dialogue about furniture and wallpaper choices. The conversation suggests marital disagreement over home decoration, with one figure insisting they won't "be sociable" if certain aesthetic decisions aren't made. The page primarily focuses on literary criticism rather than political satire, using the domestic furniture debate as light humor illustrating typical household disputes of the era.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
MRS. NOAM ADDS THE FEMININE TOUCH Essays and Essayists hy isolated affluence, the essay, nevertheles cally on, that cocksure gentlemia of the arts te whe: when he is unsuccessful in prose, he writes essays: rebuffed in any branch of literature, he writes essays. Aye, the artist turns from his daub to console himself with essays the sculptor from his misshapen clay himself to the haven of essays Expression, it seems, every man must have: and if he is not endowed with oratory, nor the love for it, he must needs take to writing, cursing or fighting. But in writing he is further thwarted by the unappreciativeness of the vulgarians who practice the other two, and by those multi tudes who compete with him in fights up Parnassus, in strophes, in rounded periods, in deeps of philosophic rea- soning, and at last he is constrained te voice his indignation with things as they are through that always happy medium still left him, the essay Nowhere in the wide realms of Hterature and other weit ings has the essayist detined his essay. Why cannot he describe his owt chil Is w CAL miversal ute sameness and its universal utility, its tortoise-tike rapidity of getting anywhere, and its ubiquity, its combined charac ter of prelate and messenger boy? It is both long and short, poetic and prosaic, witty and dull, humorous and pathetic, epigrammatic and discursive. logical and illogical, wise and hh, naked and clothed in stolen garb, hacon and lamb, It may partake of genius and be somewhat of all of these. Then we may not blame the father for not knowing his own child, and we may have discovered why the world is so indulgent to the essay in all its vagaries The icelings of an essayist whose essays are quoted by other essayists is that of a man whose selfish and unselfish . HENKY, THINK YOU WERKE ABSOLUTELY WRONG Ano : : THAT FURNITURE the ministry of a prosperous congregation, Ii there is such “VES, DEAR.” ( a being as a contented person, it should be the suc t “AND ALSO ABOUT THE SHADE OF WALL PAPER WE WANT essayist. CERTAINLY . ° “LENKRY JONES oun by ere over ho viliog ‘i ‘ Surrounded by crowded poverty, by elbowing mediocrity, 53 corse aes] desires are hoth granted. His is indeed felicity, as one in ' IF YOU AKEN'T GOING TO BE SOCLARL comicbooks.com