Life, 1923-10-11 · page 12 of 36
Life — October 11, 1923 — page 12: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains diary entries from "Mrs. Pepis Diary," a recurring satirical column. The entries (October 4th, 5th, and 6th) mock domestic life and social concerns of the period. The cartoon below depicts a woman in bed confronting what appears to be her husband about laziness—she sarcastically notes he's "getting up at four o'clock in the morning" when "this is the gettin' up I should a' done yesterday." The humor satirizes working-class domestic friction and marital dynamics. The diary entries themselves critique women's domestic authority and decision-making, society gossip, and absurd household product advertising. The overall tone mocks both female social pretension and the mundane concerns of middle-class domestic life during this period.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
LIFE 0. Awake betimes, and curiously stirred by a \ctober Aral, 4th letter on the first post which did ask me to call at a reputable enough address on a matter of importance to myself, and though suspicious of its sincerity I was loath to disregard it, in especial as Ned Barnes recently received so vast a fortune by the will of an uncle of whom he had never heard. So doing on my new tailleur, very smart save for a defection in the fit of one sleeve which, I thank God, can be altered, I did proceed to the office in question. .Nor did I say aught to Sam, which I was glad of, for it was the old story of women “of cultivation and refinement” wanted as stock sellers for a new enterprise, and I should never have heard the end of it from him. And I was at some pains to convince them that I lacked the ability to sell a five-dollar gold piece for $4.95, so tenacious are their methods when once the fly is in the parlor. Up and reading in the publick prints how the October eeeenics 4 5th nation is being combed for the infant that was kidnapped two days ago. Lord! Should I be guilty of a heinous crime, they would have me in the Tombs inside of an hour....To luncheon with Marge Boothby and found her place full of comfort and beauty, and she herself responsible for all of it. How I do envy ; HN i f KANN i | yt ay) NRA Hn | “YOU'RE NOT SO LAZY, AFTER ALL. women with a knack for decoration, the faculty to as- semble a good interior having been left out of me! It is not likely, of course, that I shall ever come home with a pair of antlers, but I cannot be trusted alone in a cretonne department....Reading this night in “Another Scandal,” by Cosmo Hamilton, preposterous trash, with one woman explaining France’s attitude towards Ger- many over the telephone,as sheer conversation, and more rhetorical fuss made over the birth of a child than Ibaiez spent on the retreat from the Marne. But I mark one thing about C. Hamilton. He will never write us a ylay set on a coal barge or in a kitchen. October At my accounts all the morning, and grewtly 6th cast down over having apparently suffered from delusions of grandeur during Septemb: r, but Lydia Loomis, coming to luncheon, did remind me that it is always so at this season of the year, and we decided that there should be a law against the shops’ printing illus- trated advertisements of household wares and furnishings. And we fell a-talking of this and that, and why her boy who is at school in Switzerland should complain of never getting any beef to eat, and Lydia suggested that perhap: cows could not stick on the Alps. She did tell me (Continued on page 30) HERE YOU ARE GETTING UP AT FOUR O'CLOCK IN THE MORNING!” “YEAH, BUT THIS IS THE GITTIN’ UP I SHOULD ’A’ DONE YESTERDAY.” comicbooks.com