Life — March 17, 1921 — page 9: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# "The Miracle" by Mabel Haughton Collyer This page presents a poem and illustration about a bedridden child named Tommy recovering from measles. The poem addresses "Patricia," recalling how she defied winter weather by wearing silk stockings and exposing her legs—considered scandalously immodest in the era. The speaker, now ill with influenza, ironically suggests Patricia's pride in displaying her silken hose somehow warmed the child Tommy back to health—a "miracle." The satirical point targets early 20th-century attitudes toward women's fashion and modesty. By attributing a child's recovery to exposed female legs rather than proper medicine, the piece mocks both conservative morality and contemporary medical explanations, using humor to comment on changing social norms around women's clothing and bodily display.