Life, 1922-03-16 · page 25 of 34
Life — March 16, 1922 — page 25: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains two distinct pieces: **Top Cartoon:** A satirical drawing of asylum inmates watching a shadow-puppet show. The caption quotes an inmate saying entertainers try to "entertain us with the most it's an insult to our intelligence"—mocking how institutions underestimate patients' intellect. **Main Article & Comic Strip:** "Are You Making the Most of Your Ithood?" by Orrisroot Sweet Garden is self-help satire. The author promotes self-assertion and personal power through the concept of "Ithood"—declaring oneself a commanding "It" rather than a meek "parsnip." The accompanying four-panel comic (titled "The Man Who Went to Hunt a Clinker") illustrates someone chasing what appears to be a small creature or object through increasingly messy situations, ending with "The End." The piece satirizes the early 20th-century self-help movement and pseudo-philosophical motivational literature that promised personal transformation through positive thinking and assertiveness—while the absurd examples (a woman smoking in public to prove power) reveal how ridiculous such claims often were.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
& tal : . xemtain us %_emesy,,, 2 ee g but whe yt & With the "it's 07 8S It to cum intellige™ é e Inmate of Asylum — 108 hey ae” 43 Are You Making the Most of Your Ithood? By Orrisroot Sweet Garden friend, have you ever grown parsnips? A man ordered her to stop in front of every shoé store, look fixedly came into my Poise and Silence Study the other day. at the patent leather boots, and when she saw her image, I cal! him a man, but, in reality, before he talked with me to say audibly and firmly, “Aha, I see you and you are It.” he was only a parsnip sort of a man. His fancy, useless To-day she is a Queen among women, Two nights ago, sit- plumage was out plain enough in sight, but his real self- ting in her box at the Metropolitan, I saw her calmly hood was hidden away as thoroughly as the real selfhood of smoking a pipe. the parsnip. Friend, do you get me? Probably it is that way with you, too. Instead of ay = SS han herre TS bein King among men you are a pars No one < 7——_\ a f ever sees the real you; no, not even yourself. Most of MS C ™ us cke out miserable, weak, inefficient, subservient, £ ZU und: und and poverty-stricken steness when we should be asserting ourselves as Kings among men, \f | consious only of our sublime Ithood. We sneak into ——"| drug stores asking in timid whispers for second-rate a a a> hoocl) when we should be going straight up to the most K \ wy | Qy fe3 conspicuous policemen and demanding in the Voice that Get. “Where can I buy some first-class Scotch?” My friend, if you are ever going to get anywhere, you have got }o begin to realize to-day that you are not a parsnip 1. but an all-powerful and all-dominating It. a Begin now to realize that YOU, not somebody else, f} are |t. I know a man who was bent double, cringing befure his employer, a famous railway magnate, accept- ing every order that was given him. He read my book, “Ge on the Mountain—or the Mountain Will Get on You.” and he began then and there to declare his Ithood night and day. My friend, to-day that man is giving orders to the man who was formerly over him. He is a King among men—healthy, wealthy and rich beyond PN all his fondest desires. His eye shines opulence. ai. | know a woman who used to go down into the TheEnd cellur to smoke her cigarettes, so fearful of her husband was she. I taught her how to assert her Ithood. I The Man Who Went to Hunt a Clinker comicbooks.com