Life, 1923-12-06 · page 60 of 84
Life — December 6, 1923 — page 60: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a parody of Robert W. Service's famous poem "The Shooting of Dan McGrew," transplanting its rough Yukon frontier setting into a Christmas miracle tale. The illustration shows footprints in snow converging on a figure—presumably Santa Claus arriving at a remote cabin. The satire works by subverting expectations: hardened, cynical miners in a "gin-soaked cabin" encounter a mysterious bearded stranger who distributes gold and urges moral reform. When one recognizes him as Santa Claus, he vanishes—leaving readers uncertain whether the gold was real or a shared hallucination born of faith and redemption. The poem mocks both Service's melodramatic style and sentimental Christmas narratives, while commenting on frontier toughness versus hidden human sentiment. The inscription "With a condescending nod to Robert W. Service" signals affectionate literary mockery.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
ae ol a | The Ballad of the Night Before Christmas (With a condescending nod to Robert W. Service) . AS the Long, Long Night before Christmas, the whole of the dance saloon Beswathed in a sterile silence, dead as the gutted moon. We all lay cold on the parquet, numbed by the liquor and blue, Claw-fingered Kitty, and Windy Ike, and Dangerous Dan McGrew. Then out on the frozen tundra, arose a peculiar wail, Like the bark of a white-fanged husky bringing the Yukon mail. Smack into the gin-soaked cabin, with bloodshotted eyes that leered, Came a Stranger bespattered and grimy, and God! what a long, white beard! He didn’t say beans for a moment, just camped in his tracks and smiled, Making each calloused miner feel like a little child. Dan was the first to recover, he spat out a heart-sick taunt, “What are you doing here, Stranger? What in the hell do you want?” “Want?” asked the Stranger softly, his eyes had a mystic blaze, “IT want you scum to be happy, I want you to change your ways. I've brought you the gold that I’ve scrabbed for, up on the black Mulemitch, . Go on back home to your kinsfolk; tell them you've struck it rich.” He lifted a sack from his shoulders, then into an empty bunk Like hail on a tin veranda poured nuggets the size of a trunk. Here was an Emperor’s ransom; here was More than Enough; Our eyes stared out from their sockets, stunned by his ghastly bluff, Then up spoke an aged miner, with the ague a-shaking his paws, “You're giving the gold to us, Stranger? Why...you must be Santa Claus.” The minute he made that statement, the bearded stranger was gone, But there in its crumbling cradle, the gold gleamed dull in the dawn. We started and looked at each other, like souls who'd been seeing a wraith, For all of us thought we were hardened, and none of us had much faith. The first honest tears for ages stood in each renegade eye, And putting his head on Kit’s shoulder, Dan tore off a damn good cry. While out from the frozen tundra, like a buzzard’s pinions in flight, There trickled an eerie whisper...“Happy Christmas to all “MERRY CHRISTMAS, DAD.” «+.good night!” Henry William Hanemann. comicbooks.com