Life — January 4, 1923 — page 6: what you’re looking at

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

VOLUME I. Pp ‘ey 2) eh » 5 OG q q q q q | 0 ) f ) i q | WOE CG OCS, GE cy JANUARY 4, 1883. NUMBER 1. Birthdays ND Lire is middle-aged! Can it be but fifteen years since it celebrated lustily its twenty-fifth birthday, and Mr. Gibson drew for us a cheerful, charming winged child, crowned with laurel, and tossing off his champagne “to those who have gone.” A thousand years, instead of fifteen, might have passed since those bright days. Toasts are still proposed, but not drunk. Speeches are made, and listened to with bleak attention. A for- tieth birthday in a dry land is a sober and serious affair. The world, shaken by the impact of the Great War, has not yet achieved the Great Peace for which she fought. Irishmen are killing Irishmen in the same genial, whole-hearted fashion in which they once killed the hated Sassenach. Turks are dis- posing of vast numbers of Christians, while we shake our heads, and murmur faint ad- monishments. France has a heart full of bit- terness. Germany is teaching us the gentle art of defalcation. America holds the purse- strings of the world, and is doing her best, with the help of a prohibitive tariff, to keep her neighbors poor. England, never too proud to fight, and always too proud to owe, is crushing herself with taxes to pay us in- terest on her debt. And it is up to the forty- year-old Lire to quicken our spirits and make us laugh in the face of circumstance. Well, ten years ago (Lire was then celebrating its thirtieth birthday) Mr. Mitch- ell said truly that no pessimist could run a humorous journal. It takes a deal of courage as well as a deal of fun. Not the “meaning- less and derisive laugh” which Henry Adams charged against American society, but the gay jest aimed at folly, the sharp jest aimed at wrong, are Lire’s contributions to the art of living. Forty years of laughter lie be- hind it, and a Golden Jubilee gleams ten years ahead. Lest I should not be here to raise my empty glass that day, I send my greetings into the misty future, to meet Lire as it steps lightly over its first half-century. Agnes Repplier. ublished ct the Lige Office - uss Broadway — - New Yor’. fF) Entered ax NX:Best Office os Second Class Mail Matter- COPYRIGHT 1062, BY JAMITCHOL. comicbooks.com