Life, 1920-07-08 · page 11 of 40
Life — July 8, 1920 — page 11: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
**Top Cartoon ("The First Eviction"):** Shows a donkey-drawn cart loaded with evicted household goods, with figures being removed from a building. This satirizes landlord-tenant disputes and housing instability—likely referencing post-WWI economic hardship when evictions were common. **"Note on Beans" Essay:** A humorous philosophical meditation on beans as vegetables, comparing their stubborn nature to human character. The author uses the bean's refusal to grow like "self-respecting" vegetables as a metaphor for nonconformity and individuality. **Bottom Cartoon ("Infuriated Motorist"):** Shows an early automobile breaking down, with the frustrated driver unable to start the engine. This mocks the unreliability of early automobiles and impatient motorists—a common theme in period satire about new automotive technology.
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Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
extracting from one’s chiffonier the pre number of studs and collar buttons at critical moments. I once purchased an excessive number of these immoral no- mads and distributed them recklessly throughout my chiffonier, believing, in my innocence, that I could thus safeguard my future. But when the inevitable crisis came not one was to be found. Practically all of the chiffoniers I have had have displayed an utter lack of sys- tem, or any sense of personal responsi- bility, and during damp spells they have stuck together so fast as resolutely to withhold me from my absolute necessities. But one thought consoles me. I once knew a man who had his chiffonier un- der perfect control. He boasted that nothing in it was ever out of place, and that it never failed to do its duty. But that man later on abandoned his wife and children and, taking his partner in selfish- ness with him, went off to live by himself in a wilderness of cynical isolation and despair. The measure of our salvation in this life, after all, appears to be that we may not bend others to do our bidding. ToL r isn’t the great unrest that’s causing most of our troubles; it’s the great un-work, THE FIRST EVICTION Note on Beans N the morning paper is an item on the page that is devoted to business. It says that beans are dull but firmly held, and a little further down I see that hay is quiet. I suppose the hot summer was too much for it. But to return to the beans. Why hold them firmly? Does the bean struggle? I know it is an eccentric vegetable, for I have seen it when it first emerges from the ground. Not content to grow up like any other self-respecting vegetable, it tries to loop itself over into a croquet wicket, or, like an ostrich, hides its head Infuriated Motorist: in the sand. But its antics avail nothing. Boston is its destin awaits most of us, there to be baked until even as Gehenna resistance has gone. All this is because the bean lacks the imagination that would take it from its life of dull routine and narrow destiny. Can it be that the bean has a kind of resurrection in the brains of professors and savants of Cambridge? It can be. As the bulb flowers into the lily, so the bean is transformed into thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. IT TOOK ME ALL MORNING TO GET THIS OLD CROCK STARTED, WOULDN'T I BE THE FOOL TO STOP IT Now? comicbooks.com