Life — November 30, 1922 — page 4: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# Mrs. Pep's Diary & "Deprivations" The page contains two sections. **Mrs. Pep's Diary** presents domestic complaints from November 1924-25, satirizing household management—servants pocketing napkins, damaged linens, and financial disputes over shared dinner costs. The adjacent poem **"Deprivations (Apologies to Edwin Meade Robinson)"** is social satire listing trivial modern concerns upper-class readers needn't worry about: Ouija boards, cornet soloists, lousy theater patrons, and books about despair. The title and structure mock Robinson's serious poetry by applying it to frivolous anxieties. **"We Americans"** begins a separate piece about an American diplomat's pretentious behavior at a formal dinner, apparently critiquing American social pretension abroad. The satire targets genteel domestic complaints and class-based anxieties.