Life, 1921-08-25 · page 14 of 34
Life — August 25, 1921 — page 14: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains a satirical article by Dorothy Parker accompanied by a single-panel cartoon. The cartoon depicts a man in a suit and hat sitting beside a woman, warning her: "Look out for this dealer, Jack. You can't trust a man that looks as honest as he does." The joke satirizes con artists and swindlers—specifically those who use an appearance of trustworthiness as a deceptive tool. The irony is that extreme honesty in appearance should make someone *more* trustworthy, yet the character warns against exactly this, suggesting that criminals deliberately cultivate wholesome appearances to exploit others' good faith. The cartoon likely reflects 1920s-era concerns about fraud and deception in everyday commerce.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
The Rocking-Chair Talkers “—humidity is something awful. My, I bet this is a scorcher in the city. I often say, I feel so sorry for all those poor—” “—don’t care about doing any heavy reading during the summer. Zane Grey may be all right in the winter, but, take me; I like something lighter in the hot weather. I think this Ethel Dell writes awfully good books. They’re whole- some, that’s what I like about—” “_then you grate some cheese over it, and put it in the oven till the eggs are set. You just try it, some time when you have some left-over spinach. My husband and the boys just can’t seem to get enough of—” “—oh, do you think so? Now I think he has an awfully nice face. A good face, I call it. But I don’t envy him one bit— no, ma’am. It’s no easy job to be Presi- dent of the United States, I tell you. Sometimes, I declare I really feel sorry for—” By DOROTHY PARKER “—knit two, purl two, for the first three inches, and then it’s just plain knit- ting all the way up to the shoulders. And when you're coming down the front, you want to be sure to—” “—seem to think they'll be just like automobiles in a few years, but you needn’t tell me. What I have always said is, they'll have to do an awful lot of experimenting before they get those aeroplanes so that they work right. I don’t think any married man has any more right to go up in one of those things than he has to I don’t know what—” “—all out of place, the way some peo- ple dress up here. Why, I don’t even bother to bring up half of my evening gowns. And as for my jewelry, I just say to my husband, ‘Will, for goodness’ sake put these things in the safe deposit, so I won’t have to be bothered with them all the— “—hbelieve in live and let live and all that, and I suppose if she wants to do it, a» it’s her own affair. But it seems to me that a married woman with two children has very little to do to wear skirts that only come to her—” “—think the food has run down ter- ribly. Now, where my sister is, down at the shore, they have green peas and new corn, and I don’t know what all, every day. And ice-cream three times a week, and always your choice of steak or chops or chipped beef for breakfast, I was telling my husband, only last night —Henry,’ I said, ‘I don’t think there's any use in our coming back here another year, unless—’” On the Job as Usual ILAS: I see the fire house was burned down over to Pleasant Cor- ners. Cunt: Yes, but¢the boys got back from lodge in time to save the automatic engine—and them new fire extinguishers. “Look out for this dealer, Jack. You can’t trust a man that looks as honest as he does.” comicbooks.com we bites ea we icvewe