Life — July 15, 1920 — page 9: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# "A Cup Race: Ditty" This page features a poem by Arthur Guiterman celebrating yacht racing, with an accompanying illustration. The poem celebrates competitive sailing—"sloop yachts / Racing for a cup"—praising the sport's thrills and the skill of sailors and captains. The lower illustration shows a beached rowboat with a standing figure pointing seaward, captioned with a quote from "In th' Lunatic Asylum, Mississippi": "Oh, Captain, if I were to start and swim straight out into the ocean in that direction—and keep on and on and on—where would I land?" The joke contrasts the genteel sport of cup racing above with this asylum patient's absurd geographical question, satirizing either mental illness or profound ignorance about world geography. The humor relies on the patient's inability to understand basic directions or ocean navigation.