Life, 1922-11-30 · page 36 of 36
Life — November 30, 1922 — page 36: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a **Prudential Insurance advertisement** disguised as inspirational editorial content, not satire or political commentary. The illustration shows children playing around a gazebo or bell tower in a pastoral setting—visualizing the nursery rhyme "Ding Dong Bell." The text uses nostalgic *symbolism*: church bells, fire bells, school bells, and funeral bells as metaphors for life's major moments (weddings, disasters, education, death). The message appeals to readers' emotional memories. The advertisement's actual pitch appears in the final paragraph: it warns that ignoring messages (likely about insurance/financial protection) will lead to a "dark and forbidding" future for "those most intimate and dear"—a veiled threat that failing to buy insurance will harm one's family. This is **emotional manipulation disguised as poetry**: Prudential leverages nostalgia and fear of loss to sell life insurance by suggesting that protecting loved ones financially is a moral obligation, not merely a consumer choice.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
gw" S FROM this first imaginary ding, dong bell of Mother Goose days ringing fine frenzy for pussy’s rescue, to the noble, mellowed tones of “In Memoriam,” much of our pcetry—all our life—has been measured by Bells. This Thanksgiving morning, as you heard the church bells ringing, you thought back—through the war years—through the sound of wedding bells— your wedding—back to that long Thanksgiving morning when you were ten. When the cooking smells of “punkin pie” and the turkey came teasing through the house, didn’t you al- most die waiting for the sound of the Dinner Bell? You heard the fire bell when the big barn burnt down on the other side of the town—you heard the endless days of school bells and the alarm clock in the morning when you were first starting to business and all your youth yearned for another hour’s sleep. Yet, of all the bells, perhaps you remember most clearly the slow, haunting sound as they tolled for one of the nation’s great, or for even one dearer to you. NNIA SIT04VaNNIM Whatever the bells say to you this Thanksgiving, let them never say to those most intimate and dear, that the future is dark and for- bidding because you ignored a message so persistently rung! The Prudential Insurance Company of America Epwaro D. Durrie.p, Home Office, Newark, President New Jersey comicbooks.com