Life, 1922-10-12 · page 24 of 36
Life — October 12, 1922 — page 24: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
**The Cartoon:** A college student named Gerald is complimented on writing plays and compared to Shakespeare. His witty response—that Shakespeare didn't attend college—suggests that formal education isn't necessary for literary talent, a mild jab at credentialism. **The Article:** "The Pursuit of the Mail" is humorous domestic satire about a man who compulsively saves all his letters despite knowing he'll never reread them. He fears hypothetical guilt: destroying Aunt Nettie's letter before she dies, or losing Cousin Rudolph's postcard before learning of his death in Boston. Yet mysteriously, his cherished letter-chest always survives house fires, moves abroad, and relocations—while he ironically suspects it's the unpaid bills inside that mysteriously protect it. The joke targets middle-class anxiety about sentimentality and obligation, poking fun at how we irrationally cling to mementos while harboring secret hopes they'd disappear.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
“I hear you're writing all the plays at college, Gerald. You're getting to be a regular Shakespeare, aren’t you?” “Well, yes. But you know, Shakespeare didn’t go to college.” I“ not the kind of sentimental per- son to go about mumbling things to myself, but I’ll admit I save all my letters. When the wad gets too thick for my letter file, I tie it up and put it in with the pile in the back of my desk. When that pile gets too thick, I buy a new desk. Not that I ever will need them again, or probably ever look at them again, but then, on the other hand, maybe'l might. I’ve argued it all out with myself, and it’s that possibility that makes me save everything I get in the mail. Everything except bills, —bills I do not keep. A bill, I’ve found, I always get a duplicate of, a week or two later, and as like the first as two peas. My wife says it’s silly to keep all The Pursuit of the Mail my mail that way, and I agree with her, but I never can bring myself to get rid of it. Suppose now poor old Aunt Nettie should be taken sud- denly sick and be called to her Maker, and the week before I had torn up her last letter about her trip to the dentist. I know I should never have done reproaching myself, and most likely I’d have an obsession and run about butting my head into stone walls. Or if I destroyed Cousin Ru- dolph’s picture postal of the Bunker Hill Monument, and heard the next day that he had been lost beyond re- covery in the Boston streets, I know my conscience would get me, and I should take to talking in my sleep, and throwing things. So I won’t see them destroyed, though I confess I’ve secretly hoped and prayed and plotted that they might disappear. When our house caught fire, the only thing that the firemen came staggering out of the flames with was my chest of old let- ters. When we sent our trunks to Europe, that chest was the only one that made the steamer and wasn't delayed a month. We've moved a dozen times this year, and each time that chest has arrived along with the kitchen table and the dining-room clock, which always manage some!iow to get in front of the first load. I think it’s those unpaid bills in it. “Smoke?” I say to the moving man, and he sticks one of my best cigars behind his ear, lifts up the chest of old letters and starts to carry it ut. comicbooks.com