Life — December 23, 1920 — page 16: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

-LIFE- beat vainly. It had worn the strength of the mightiest man in the world. The tide had started to recede, Another year and civilization would be safe. If he died, his funeral pyre would be the city kindled by his enemies. He broke off meditation and lighted the cigarette. He smoked it slowly, as befitted the last cigarette measuring the shortening span of his life. In his little room Hendrix, the butler, was inspecting a carved andalwood box, a half-smoked cigarette between his fingers. “Just three hundred and sixty-five left,” he chuckled, “and the master never suspected me of taking them.” He raised his head and dropped the box into his drawer. He opened the door and started downstairs. “Those falling logs will annoy the master, popping like a pistol shot.” As the Movie Press Agents Would Write It “GeoP morning, Jonesy!” exclaimed Branch Manager Trux- ton de Haviland of the Apathe Distributing Corporation, long-time director of the famous Knockout Comedies, and who achieved even greater heights with his masterly spectacles in some of the greatest enterprises ever undertaken in the history of the motion picture, as he ran into a boyhood friend one day just as he was entering the palatial offices of the mammoth million-dollar plant of the Apathe company. \WHEN a man gets fifty dollars a week he tells his wife that he gets forty; his friends that he gets one hundred, and, oh, what he tells the tax assessor! First Show Girl: you say YOU'RE GOING OUT TO SUPPER AFTER THE SHOW T iT? WHO WITH? Second Show Girl; We iNvitep ME OVER THE 'PHONE, 1 DIDN'T The Last Cigarette in the World HE most powerful man in the world leaned for- ward in his massive chair, deep in profound study. On the library grate before him burned a crack- jing wood fire, the only light in his Fifth Avenue mansion. On an oak table at his side lay a cigarette, a match and a revolver. It was the last cigarette he would ever see. The world-wide prohibition against smoking had caused a ruthless extermination of nico- tine. He well knew how successful it had been, for his agents had combed the four corners of the globe. He considered the last cigarette, now worth the ransom of a king. On the day of the final prohibition against smoking, twenty years before, he had said to the great steel magnate, “ Dunlap, I have laid up a hun- dred thousand cigarettes. When I smoke the last one I will shoot myself.” He had renewed that vow with each ci How rapidly they had disappeared! And yet—he had meant it then; he meant it now. Fear dared not contest his will He had reached the end of the trail, his mind still firm. He : *, . : R ‘ou so D? mused half regretfully. He wished it might have been other- She: WHY ARE YoU so WoRRIED He: WeRe COMES MY BOSS. HE LOATHES DRINKING, A c bi ; IN ORDER TO KEEP MY JOB, 1 HAVE SPENT HOURS CONVINC posed a bulwark against which the scarlet tide of anarchy had HIM THAT I'M ONLY AN 'URABLE CLOVE FIEND. wise. For twenty years his dominating personality had inter- comicbooks.com