Life, 1920-08-05 · page 20 of 48
Life — August 5, 1920 — page 20: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains two separate satirical pieces: **Top Cartoon**: Shows a chaotic crowd mobbing a confectionery shop with a sign advertising "Ice Cream Soda Reduced to 5¢." The caption jokes that if ice-cream sodas dropped back to a nickel's price, the result would be pandemonium. This satirizes consumer behavior and price-sensitivity—the implication being that a nickel price would create such demand that crowds would overwhelm the shop. (Context: A nickel was historically cheap; the joke reflects economic anxieties about inflation or deflation.) **Bottom**: Two pieces: - A nonsensical poem titled "An Oriental Ballad" by Berton Braley, mockingly stringing together pseudo-Oriental vocabulary (yashmak, vizier, zenana, kohl, etc.) until the speaker admits he's simply exhausted his supply of exotic-sounding words. This satirizes orientalism and flowery, affected verse. - A cartoon showing a constable refusing to help an injured man, claiming jurisdiction lies in "Hohokus County" outside his district—mocking bureaucratic buck-passing and jurisdictional excuses for inaction.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
ee ee 71! 18 CREAM SODA REDUCED To IF THE PRICE OF ICE-CREAM SODA WERE TO DROP BACK TO A NICKEL An Oriental Ballad CO! fair is my Yashmak, as sweet as a mosque That's worn by the dreamy vizier; She dances as light as a dainty kiosk; Her voice is more dulcet to hear Than any zenana or dervish or kohl That sings in the nargileh tree, While the bulbuls swim round in the odalisque bowl And the alcoran serves her with tea. She nibbles sweet fez as she plays her serang With a jewelled bismillah of gold; She smokes her seraglio under the bhang, On a chibouk of curious mold. Yes fair is my Yashmak, and lovely and gentle ; But though I've scarce praised her at all, I’ve used up, I find, all the words Oriental That I can exactly recall! Berton Braley. “DON'T YOU SEE THAT MAN'S INJURED? WHY DON’T YOU TELEPHONE FOR AN AMBULANCE?” Constable: u's 1N HOHOKUS COUNTY, MISTER—OUT O° MY DIS: comicbooks sii |