Life, 1923-11-08 · page 15 of 36
Life — November 8, 1923 — page 15: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page presents a satirical diary entry mocking upper-class women's domestic complaints and hypochondria. The writer complains about throat ailments and medical treatments while describing her servant's malicious compounds and her husband Sam's indifference to her suffering. The top cartoon shows fashionably dressed women gossiping, captioned with innuendo about impropriety ("BUT HOW IS IT POSSIBLE FOR ME TO TELL YOU APART?"). The lower cartoon depicts a street scene with the caption "HOW MANY MILES DO YUH GET OUT'Y HER TO THE LUMP OF COAL?" — likely mocking working-class dialect and the contrast between wealthy women's frivolous concerns and working people's harsh realities. The satire targets privileged women's self-centered preoccupations and servants' resistance to their employers' demands.
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Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Wes Lops Diary aes Too ill to rouse myself and November go to church, as is my Ist yearly custom on this day, I do love the hymn, For All the But Sam did chant it for me tily and then did summon the physi- n to come and look at my throat, ch he did, and rammed a wire spike ped with cotton and an evil mixture wn my gullet until I was at some ins not to strike out at him. More- r, he left an assortment of mal- orous compounds with my servant fay and instructions for her to mal- nts. at me regularly in the same fashion tinst his coming later in the day, and can set down with sincerity that for consilitis the remedy is worse than the Lord! why is it that all the icines which work for good are Hack and vile-tasting?...Lay abed all is day, forbidding them to bring near mail resembling biils. Fell creading Heywood Broun’s The Sun Vield to take my mind off my misery, d marked that its modern heroine had her library every important book blished since 1900, and it struck me i a sudden that these advanced young men sound exactly like that—as if rey had never read anything written fore 1890. sease. any Slit, SES, bY Gallant: BUT OW IS IT POSSIBLE FOR ME TO TELL YOU APART? Still abed, and the victim November 6 torturers who basely try 2nd to convey that their an- guish over the treatments is greater than my own. Nor can I swallow aught save with the greatest difficulty....The goods I sent to be tinted for hangings came home this day from the dyer, but it was not the pleasant mulberry I had commanded, having turned out a ter- Boy: HOW MANY MILES DO YUH GET OUT’V HER TO THE LUMP OF COAL? rific purple, the shade they twine with black and drape on public buildings when a great man dies. So I am think- ing of sending it over to the Arch- bishop against the death of the next prelate, for there is enough of it to do one side of the Cathedral, and I shall have no use for the stuff, God knows.... Sam home early, to cheer me up, as he said, but Lord! he had not been in the house five minutes when he discovered some watered bottles amongst the new gin, and his goings-on would have adorned any horror sketch in the Grand Guignol’s repertoire. My throat some better, but November the atrocities upon it con- 3rd tinue, and my mind keeps reverting to thoughts of pineapple ice, which the doctor has forbidden me... . Kate Mitchell to luncheon at my bed- side, a-telling me how her rich aunt had gone into the best jewel shop in Boston to buy her a gold vanity case, but had been persuaded to take a handsomely bound dictionary instead. And though the leather work be fine and costly, quoth Kate, there are the same old words inside, and we did both agree that she is the heroine of a tragedy....I do earnestly hope that my malady will have left me by Monday, forasmuch as I have an inordinate long- ing to get out and purchase a hat with a long fantasy hanging down one side. Baird Leonard. comicbooks.com