Life, 1923-09-06 · page 10 of 40
Life — September 6, 1923 — page 10: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
The page contains two distinct pieces of satire: **Top cartoon**: A giraffe and hippopotamus converse about an engagement announcement. The joke relies on the animals' respective physical attributes—the giraffe's long neck and the hippo's bulk—making the hippo's quip that she could knock the giraffe over "with a feather" absurd and humorous. **Main article**: "The Discovery of the Steel Engraving Farm" is a fictional tall tale about finding the original Landseer painting "A Stag at Bay" after twenty years. It satirizes the art world by describing an absurd backstory involving steel engravings mass-produced and distributed globally. The accompanying illustration shows a domestic scene with a Bolshevik reference, mocking both political upheaval and sentimental Victorian imagery. The satire targets pretension in art appreciation and collecting.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
: Miss Giraffe: WERE YOU SURPRISED TO HEAR OF OUR ENGAGEMENT? Miss Hippo: SURPRISED? MY DEAR, YOU COULD HAVE KNOCKED ME OVER WITH A FEATHER. The Discovery of the Steel Engraving Farm TER being lost for twenty years, the original paint- ing of Landseer’s “A Stag at Bay” has been found. Newspaper accounts state that it has been the property all this time of an old woman at Goole, who had received it as a present from a man that she had befriended. This is only part of the truth. Attached hereto is an excerpt from the report of the investigator who unearthed the painting. “We discovered the original of ‘A Stag at B in the most distressing surroundings. It was evidently a late nineteenth century den in which famous paintings had been hidden after abduction After a time steel engrav- ings were made of them, steel engravings by the mil- lion, and shipped’ by these miscreants to practically every English - speaking home in the world, where they were hung in the front parlor. “In the same stall with the Stag were Pharaoh’s horses, hardly recognizable from much steel engraving. They whinnied weakly as we en- foundland dog’s head, was lik > in a terrible con- dition and had to be fed brandy from a spoon before he could be moved. In a corner huddled a group of sheep that still thought they were lost in the storm. “Upstairs conditions were even worse. The Signers of the Declaration of Independence were bunched to- gether in one room, while in another Generals Grant and Lee and their brave men were waiting in a sort of hope- We encountered a sad sight in the living room, where a boy, leaving for the city, was bid- ding his mother good-by. Over in the corner sat a country doctor, bending over the crib of a sick child, while the parents stood by waiting for the crisis to pass. “Dr. Greetz, who was with me, was visibly overcome, and I myself was none too steady as I announced to them that they were free and that the era of steel engravings had_ passed.” Robert C. Benchley. less resignation. Legion T is hoped to raise ten thousand dollars for a monument to Pocahontas. If every John Smith con- tered, and one of them died. ‘Old Faithful,’ the New- “DON’T BE A BOLSHEVIK, SANDY. LET THE LITTLE SNOB ALONE.” tributes, it ought to be easy to raise a million. comicbooks.com