Life, 1923-02-22 · page 35 of 36
Life — February 22, 1923 — page 35: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a **subscription advertisement for *Life* magazine** built around the famous George Washington cherry-tree legend—the apocryphal story that young Washington confessed to chopping down his father's cherry tree rather than lying about it. The satire works on multiple levels: 1. **The Setup**: The headline jokes that Washington's father punished him, but *Life* magazine claims to have "nothing on" readers—meaning they won't judge harshly either. 2. **The Pitch**: *Life* offers to teach readers how to make a dollar "go farther than George did"—mocking Washington's legendary act of throwing a coin across the Potomac River as wasteful. 3. **The Irony**: The magazine calls itself honest ("We Can't Tell a Lie Ourselves") while simultaneously running a subscription drive—a self-aware joke about their own commercial self-promotion. 4. **The Appeal**: It references Washington's patriotism and asks if any "100% American" would refuse such a wholesome impulse, using nationalism as a persuasion tactic. It's essentially *Life* poking fun at itself while pitching subscriptions.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
His Father Had It on Him — But George Has Nothing on Us! We Can’t Tell a Lie Ourselves. WE hereby admit that LIFE is the best humorous weekly published at 598 Madison Avenue, New York City, and we don’t have to take a fall out of a cherry tree to prove the verac- ity of this cheery treatise. All we need is one of your dollars, whereupon we will show you how to make it go farther than George did— and he threw one across the Potomac. Take out your little hatchet and chop off that Coupon now. Then send it “First in war, First in peace, First in the hearts of our countrymen, ‘women and children.” to us with a chip, and we will reciprocate with a copy of LIFE every week for 10 weeks, including the following special numbers: THE EASTER NUMBER THE HOME-BUILDERS’ NUMBER THE MAY DAY NUMBER Young Mr. Washington had a spank- ing good impulse and obeyed it. Can any 100% American do less? GEORGE W. LIFE, 598 Madison Ave., N. Y. City. Dear LIFE: | can’t tell a lie myself. I want a trial subscrip- tion for 10 weeks, and here is a dollar for your trouble, my good man. ($1.20 in Canada, $1.40 in Europe.) LIFE, 598 Madison Avenue, New York One year, $5.00. (Canadian, $5.80; Foreign, $6.60) comicbooks.com