Life, 1920-10-14 · page 16 of 44
Life — October 14, 1920 — page 16: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
**The Cartoon:** The top illustration depicts men with golf clubs on a residential street. The caption quotes "Winkler" asking an old neighbor ("Knobbs") why he's running out of clubs, with Knobbs replying he can't afford to replace them. This satirizes **suburban recreational spending** — the joke being that even middle-class homeowners felt financial pressure to maintain leisure activities like golf, a status symbol of the era. **The Articles Below:** These address **English language purity** (a League of Professors concerned about linguistic standards) and **domestic contentment** (a wife boasting her husband won't leave despite better job offers elsewhere). The page reflects interwar American anxieties: economic precarity masked by suburban aspiration, linguistic elitism, and marital satisfaction as economic stability.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
IPinkler (to Knobbs, who is just beginning golf): WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITII ALI. THOSE CLUBS? Knobbs: WELL, WHATEVER ELSE HAPPENS, | CAN'T AFFORD TO RUN OUT OF CLUBS. A League of Professors of English @ WANDERING Briton up in Canada has re- BY cently expressed his sad conviction that the Eng- lish language needs a guardian. He suggested that the universities of the United States and the British Empire “select professors to mect in conference and draw up a scheme” to set up “a standard of purit hat is to s he wants to establish an International C f the Professors of English to tell the rest of us what is good lish and what isn’t. neil League of “ng: I good boys, very good boys indeed, we can ask teacher to tell us whether or not bonchead and pussyfoot attain to the proper standard. Wouldn't that be a sweet, sweet boon?—as Artemus Ward put it Perhap. sors of If we are International Council of the League of Profes- English would Le inventive enough and industrious enough to devise a method of determining the purity of the English used by different authors, bestowing Grade A Joseph Conrad and Grade B on H. G. Wells. would arise, of course, in gauging with scientific pre exact proportion of impurity in George Ade. Unfortunately, the ultimate result of the beneficent activities of the Interna- tional Council of the League of Professors of English might upon Here a Goop HEAVENS! OLD CHAP, Our Street T'S quiet, is Our street. No trolley cars, or Buses—just Fords And other kinds of Vehicles That are the best That life Insurance Money Can buy. And we have Babies Across the way, with Self-starters ; And we have Talking-machines With Cranks To the left and Right; and We never miss A Syllable. Sometimes, We'd like to Call, The folks next door Look so nice And homelike from our Windows ; But we don’t want To be Disillusioned, So we Stay at Home. Christy Holmes. be the refinement of our mother tongue to such a supersubtle delicacy that we could none of us speak it. This would be a grievous calamity Lire wouldn't be half as lively as it is if it had to appear em harsh, and even impolite, to declare our own this in Esperanto. conviction that this suggestion of andering Briton is osteocephalic—but no other adjective is as apt The Domestic Optimist at Work " Y husband fas never spoken a cross word to me.” “Daughter is always at the head of her class, and she doesn’t have to study a bit hard. She really s time to play than any of the other girls.” “I'm so glad you came, I assure you doesn’t matter.” “So glad you ¢: ‘ems to have more One extra for dinner led! I didn’t care to go to the matinée, any- wa “My husband could get a much larger salary by going with another house—in fact they are begging him to do it—but his present employers have treated him so nicely that he just won't leave them.” ever mind breaking the vase—it was not one that I cared especially for.” comicbooks.