Life, 1920-04-15 · page 13 of 44
Life — April 15, 1920 — page 13: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
The cartoon at top shows a social gathering where someone asks: "I wonder if Mary and Mr. Smith have quarreled." Response: "No; they aren't good enough friends for that yet." The article below discusses cigar ash etiquette—a humorous treatise on where gentlemen deposit cigarette and cigar ashes in polite society. The author satirizes the obsession with proper ash disposal, noting that ash receivers exist "as plentiful as automobiles on the streets of Venice," yet people still deposit ashes in vases, teacups, and improper places. The satire targets upper-class social pretension: the meticulous concern with trivial manners reveals anxious social climbing. By treating ash placement as consequential to social standing, the piece mocks the arbitrary rules governing "good enough friends" and genteel behavior among the aspiring classes.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
“1 WONDER IF “$0 IF you are a man not interested in the subject of smoking, or a woman who doesnt approve, you had best stop right here, turn about and go back But if take genuin pleasure in a cigar, or at least do not share a fanatical tipathy smokers; or if you are of the feminine kin of one of you an- towards these smokestacks in trousers, you may erive some satisfaction from trotting ong beside me for a little while First [ want the attention of the in who, with a good dinner in his omach and a good cigar between his eth, is content temporarily to leave to thers the struggle for the attainment { honors and great riches. Can you tell me why it is that the ashes of fic- on cigars are always “ flicked" off? They are never jarred off, knocked off, pinched off, pushed off or snapped off— ways they are “flicked” off. I have MARY AND MR. SMITH HAVE AREN'T COOD ENOUGH FRIENDS FUE Ashes never been quite able to get it it mean that the cigar is cracked like Or docs it mean that it is given a vicious swing, like down the mercury in a clinical ther- mometer? I should really like a clearer THEY Does a whip? shaking understanding of the matter. And it is to the place into which or upon which the ashes drop that I would cirect your attention. Some day an Edisonian mind will produce an ash receiver that can be worn in the but- tonhole, attached to the hat brim or dangled from the wrist, and thus pro- nd convenient recep- vide an efficient tacle for one’s ashes—that is, one’s cigar or cigarette ashes. When plentiful as automobiles on the streets ash receivers have been as of Venice, I have been driven almost to despair. I have watched the ash of my cigar grow longer and longer. My replies to some apprehensively of my host's observ have PUARRELED.” THAT Yer.” characterized me asinine, but my en- meta- in my tire interest was riveted to the morphosis that was taking place hand, Came the avalanche of fluffy gray, and descended upon my new trousers. I said something not deprecatory and courteous; but different kinds of ad- jectives would have been required to qualify my thoughts. In. other in- stances some relief has been afforded. Following my host's example, I have deposited my ashes in my coffee cup, the umbrella stand, or in whatever hap- pened to be the most convenient. \ word to the suffering womankind of the smoker—you who have dug ashes from the jardini¢re, emptied them o vases, routed them from card trays, taken other hiding places. You are justly en- titled to a measure of sympathy. That portion of your household duties which and them from innumerable rightly Lelongs within the jurisdiction comicbooks.com