Life — November 24, 1921 — page 15: what you’re looking at

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

If You’re Going to Be Anything Young Men, Consider Carefully These Careers The Fine Arts ° | had a son I would advise him to » into the Fine Arts, because that sion is considered a great deal r than the clerk’s or laborer’s or keeper’s. A man in one of the Fine should practice modesty, and turn aside enthusiasms relative to how clever he is (I wonder how does he ever do ith a studied ingenuous smile and a shy “Oh, 7 d’know, it just comes.” The true student of the Fine Arts should practice early to balance things, and should try to sit for one hour with a teacup on one knee and a platter on the other, reading from a book of poems. It is well to try this at first with wood- en shingles, so that they will not break if they drop. Care should be taken of the hair, and scintillation should be practiced each night before retiring. You should carefully observe the Usual everywhere, and then avoid it. The Fine Arts have to do with sound, id sight. It is easy to remem- because they all start with s. The Musician (sound): To be a Musician you must be born in an East Side Tenement on Canal Strect, over a brass-shop, and start in at an carly age to cry for a fiddle. On your seventh birthday you must even go so far as to refuse all your other presents for the fiddle you saw in the toy-shop. It is‘not always necessary for your father to understand you, but your mother should always sympathize with you, in a broken Yiddish way, and i t should have prayed over in ia before you were born that you would ery just that way for a fiddle. After your seventh birthday the lines of progress become broader. As a general thing it is expected that a musician will contract a nervous tem- perament and go to war at the age of -seven, just when he is about to into flower. A few neglect to do this. and in consequence join the Phil- harmonic. The Litterateur (sense) : The Litterateur differs from the Mu- sician in not having either of his parents understand him; however, he is allowed greater freedom in the choice of his environment, and can be born in either an old New England farmhouse with very odd gables, or in Corey Ford a New York tenement. He must be careful, however, to distinguish the latter from the block of others like it, and mark it for future auto- biographical mention. He must spend a great deal of time on his stomach reading adventure, or else picking out fairies from the colors in the glass prism on the parlor chandelier, for which he will occasionally be soundly spanked; this his sensitive little soul will find hard to bear. He will have a great deal of trouble with his Algebra. When you have a Mood, take two Sodamints; if it doesn’t disappear you area Poet. Analyze yourself, and simi- lize your Soul. The Artist (sight): The Artist must draw all over every- thing, and have no practical sense at all; if he sells newspapers, he must draw all over the newspapers, and put mustaches and beards on all the pho- tographs. He must draw all over his school-books and on the inside of his geography; he should study Latin so that he may have a Latin grammar and draw all over that. He must draw pink roses all over the tablecloth with the dried paints that his dissolute father left behind when he ran away, and be punished for it by his great- aunt who does not know that the pink roses were in memory of his mother, who died of tuberculosis when he was three. At nineteen he will attempt a Madonna. All artists are sensual. You must get to realize this as soon as possible, so that you will not try to represent Nude Chaos by a Sunbonnet Girl. “That man you just danced with is a mind reader.” “Gracious! I bet he’s offended at what I think of his dancing.” comicbooks.com