Life, 1925-02-05 · page 15 of 36
Life — February 5, 1925 — page 15: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
The page contains two distinct pieces: **"The Skiing Party"** (upper section) is a humorous essay about skiing as a fashionable winter sport, describing the equipment, hill selection, and thrills of downhill skiing. **The cartoon below** satirizes an optometrist's clinic. A bespectacled eye doctor stands bewildered before a chart covered in illegible scribbles and mathematical notation, while confused patients sit in the waiting room surrounded by question marks. The joke: the optometrist's own eye chart is incomprehensibly messy—he cannot even read his own prescription test. It's a classic ironic gag mocking a professional's inability to practice his own specialty. The "Prof. Clinic Optician" sign confirms the setting. The humor relies on visual contradiction: an eye doctor surrounded by visual chaos.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
LIFE The Skiing Party KIING was introduced from Europe along with the Bubonic Plague and I sh sparrows, and recently has become very popular at American winter resorts. In fact, it is estimated that if all the people who wore skis for the first time last winter were laid end te end, they would have a great deal of Je in getting back onto their fcet. little game, as I gather it from nal diagrams drawn by Peter Ski, a Swiss inventor, depends on very same principles that put the Temperance Society on its feet—keep to the straight and narrow path, and vt spread yourself, The equipment for a skiing party is very simple, Jodine, bandages, splints and a couple of ambulance surgeons will insure adequate protection. In ddition, it is sometimes wise to bring along a pair of skis. However, this is not entirely necessary, as they will invariably work off your feet anyway a quarter of the way downhill, and you will make the rest of the journey on the least protected portion of your anatomy. The selection of the hill for skiing likewise unimportant. Almost any vuntain-side can be counted on for veral well-concealed boulders, and adds to the clement of suspense if you select a hill with a trolley line across the bottom, although a barbed wire fence does almost as well. It is usually a somewhat silent an. a somewhat forlorn little line of people that tags up the mountain-side. Not a few of them are mumbling to them- selves, and there is a sort of finality about the last handclasp that is not at all pleasant. Even the take-off has its awkward moments, especially when the leader has to be dug out twice in suc- cession from the very same drift; but once you are really going there is no stopping you, short of a large tree. Then there is a thrill in the cold air and the flying snow-crystals and the assorted frost-bites. Your heart beats high and wide as the scenery rushes by you, now sideways, now at a forty- five-degree angle, and now upside down. You will find that there is an undeniable clement of suspense in catapulting down a sheer mountain-side of ice and snow and recalling after you are well on your way that you crossed a large stone wall on the way up. The thrill that comes once in a life- time, I sometimes say, usually at the very end. Corey Ford. One May Well Ask Briccs: I see people are living a great deal longer than they used to. Griccs: Well, what else is there to do? are certain to experience no diffi- average man may be defined as whatsoever about finding them, you are started. It sometimes A one who never knows the size of his underwear. ook SHARP row. a } peor 4 & IF YOU CANT © Foue tereg wowo-f fe) comicbooks.com