Life, 1924-05-15 · page 8 of 46
Life — May 15, 1924 — page 8: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains a satirical illustration titled "A Sinner Sidesteps" depicting what appears to be a domestic scene with a child and adults. The accompanying text is a first-person monologue from someone (likely a child or young person) boasting about evading parental supervision and moral guidance. The satire targets the speaker's self-righteous hypocrisy: they claim to read improving literature and associate with morally upright people, yet they're actually planning to circumvent oversight by manipulating authority figures. They brag about surveilling others' behavior while avoiding their own scrutiny. The cartoon critiques the gap between professed virtue and actual conduct—a common Life magazine theme mocking self-deception and moral pretense among the American public.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Ye ey Wa WAL te <—s \ qj 4, ‘ “MOTHER, MAY 1 MAVE A PENNY?” “WHAT DO YOU WANT IT FOR, DEAR? UM GOING TO THE CANDY STORE WITH SOME FRIE To HOLD MY pS OF MINE AN’ 1 WANT TO BE ABLE END UP.” A Sinner Sidesteps H® is hounding me. In every magazine and newspaper I pick up he has an article telling me to be nobler. Earnestly he adjures me at fifteen cents a word. Be kind. Be thrifty. Be loving to your aunts and uncles. And yet be cheerful. And so on He has figured out exactly what I ought to be to suit him. But I'll fool him yet. Sooner than be a paragon, I'll he a parallelopiped. There are several of him. The game of preaching in that a number of able exhorters 1 of them determined to make me print for profit is so g have jumped. inte BETTER They are bound that I shall get up early and take regular exercise and read good books and inhale fresh air and swallow their stuff. They live but to lecture me The chorus of syndicatydids is driving me bad You wait. Some day I'll turn upon my monitors who persecute me for righteousness’ sake. I'll belabor them with T'll find out their addresses and send them improving letters. T'll demand of them whether they arise each morning simultancously with the fowls of bromides of their own the coop; I'll make them tell whether they eat spinach at every meal Yes, in my exclusive series of “Dead Weight Upliit Chats, or Platitudes for Pinheads,” I'll pick picked on me. But I fear it won't stop them on them as they have Law Mackall. Points of View HE. sturdy Gloucester fishing smack. with all sail set, turned the point of land and swung into full view “Ah!” cried the old salt in a blue moon.” “Yes,” murmured the famous painter, “the silhouette of the sails against the sky is most effective.” “Ha! ha!” chuckled the great bootlegger to himself. “Two hundred cases of Scotch and five hundred of gin aboard.” “As trim a craft as I've sighted CAMPAIGN funds this season will be cut low and are likely to get trimmed comicbooks.com