Life, 1925-08-27 · page 13 of 36
Life — August 27, 1925 — page 13: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains three satirical pieces reflecting early 20th-century concerns: **"Letters of a Modern Father"** mocks parental anxiety about automobiles. A father warns his son about the dangers of the new automobile "game," offering money as an incentive to avoid it—suggesting cars were viewed as reckless, fashionable dangers to young men. **"If Not More"** cartoon depicts a daughter's school expenses as an invasion/robbery, with military imagery ("KILL THE UMPIRE! ROBBER!"). It satirizes how expensive girls' education was becoming—treating educational costs as financial assault on the family budget. **"Mrs. Pep's Diary"** discusses summer social obligations and women's fashion concerns, reflecting upper-class leisure culture anxieties about wardrobes and social propriety. Overall, the page humorously captures early 1900s middle/upper-class parental and social concerns.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
- LIFE - Letters of a Modern Father Y pear Son: For a fellow used to driving with the top down you seem to be doing fairly well since you got married, and inasmuch as you now cost me less in fines I should be glad to lend you a thousand dollars, as you request, were it not for one objection. I consider it my duty to remind you now that a man who borrows without expectation of paying lays himself open to the law. So I would be doing you a serious wrong to accept your note for a thousand. You will recall that when you ran away in your Senior year in college and came back married you told me that you were going to get into the automobile game. Some day I should be interested in knowing the score. So I shall have to refuse to lend you a thousand, but I am sending your wife a hundred as a gift. A hundred in her hands will last just as long as a thousand in yours. Your AFFECTION. FATHER, P. S—Ii you should happen to get tired of the auto- mobile game I know where you can get a job in a garage. McC. H. If Not More “THAT daughter of mine is crazy to go away to school this fall. How much do you suppose it will cost me?” “How much have you got?” PUZZLE: FIND THE UMPIRE’S LITTLE BROTHER. Sgiekicda THERE, HE'S “DON'T MEN HAVE THE BEST OF EVERYTHING! GONE AND MAD HIS MANE noppep!" Ne Lops Diary A An invitation on the first post to visit the ugust vt arches on their boat, but the season is now Marches on their boat, but the season is now too 20th far advanced to replenish a summer wardrobe, and the older I grow the more do I hold with that old man in Forster's “A Room with a View,” who had graven on his armoire, Mistrust all enterprises which require new clothes. Morcover, this is the season when I do most like to be in town, with new pieces at the theatre every night, and all my friends returning from Europe with handsome presents for me. So I did write Molly our regrets, plead- ing dentist's appointments as an excuse, and I pray that my teeth may not fall out as a punishment for such inno- cent chicanery. Then to browsing along our bookshelves, taking down this volume and that to refresh my memory, and in Josephine Daskam Bacon's “Truth o’ Women,” I was struck again by the chance she affords ladies long since dead to defend themselves, Xanthippe, for instance, says that the many who call her shrew never had to live with a demon who asked questions. And Potiphar's wife wants to know why Joseph, a menial Israelitish keeper of ac- counts, should be credited on no word but his own. At the end of the day I did on my new chiffon evening frock, very chic, pirouetting before the mirror with shameful (Continued on page 31) comicbooks.com