Life, 1925-11-12 · page 4 of 41
Life — November 12, 1925 — page 4: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page is primarily a **Santa Fe Railway advertisement** celebrating the train line's 31st year of service. The left side features bold graphic advertising promoting the California Limited as "the shortest route" from Chicago to California, highlighting exclusive features like dining car service and passage through the Grand Canyon. The Native American imagery (headdress, feathered design) appears decorative rather than satirical—typical of early 20th-century railway marketing that exoticized the American West to appeal to travelers. The right side contains unrelated literary content: poems about lemon meringue pie and a mysterious fish called "Palolo," suggesting this is a miscellaneous magazine page combining ads with feature content. There's no apparent political satire or commentary here—just commercial promotion and light entertainment typical of Life magazine's format.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Ww. Please send me Santa Fe picture-folders of trip to: Springtime begins e moment you- the California Limited. Always ex- first-class. Santafke “all the way” -the shortest route - throven & Ss " " un scenic’ wonderland, throu Harvey d car anoth J. Black, Passenger Trafhe Manager Santa Fe System Lines 1280 Railway Exchange, Chicago, Ill Lemon Meringue Pie A Love Song Tuere’s blueberry pie that empurples the tongue, There are custard and rhubarb and squash ; There’s pumpkin pie honored when Grandpa was young, And potato pie—some would call bosh. There's blackberry pie that is fit for a lord, And cranberry pie with a tang; But all of these dainties may go by the board Ti I can have lemon meringue! Oh, tender the undercrust, daintily laid, And flaky its generous rim, And golden the filling so spicily made, So luscious and level and trim; But heap it and crown it with delicate foam— From such Aphrodite upsprang ; No sight more alluring, wherever I roam, Than a circle of lemon meringue. Plunge deeply the knife, and don't measure nor count, But carve me a liberal wedge; What juices, what essences, trickle and mount, And drip from the succulent edge! Oh, poets may warble the fragrance of May, But none of them all ever sang A theme so deserving a jubilant lay As a big hunk of lemon meringue. A. RW. The Breath of an Old Romance Orr the coast of New Zealand a tiny fish is found, so we are assured by sci- entists. It can be seen at dawn on one particular day of the year only, when it rises to the surface of the ocean for several hours. The siame of the little fish is “Palolo.” Is this but one more mystery to add to the many mysteries of the dee Does it even go deeper than the decp? Perhaps the little fish is the finny pro- totype of that lover who, with his sweetheart, “read of Lancelot” to his eternal shame. And, as in the Divine Comedy, does the little fish suffer end- lessly for his overwhelming pas: Does the little fish also persist pa- tiently in the expiation of his scarlet sin? Perhaps this one day a year when he rises to the surface of the ocean is a day of grace in the weary round of penance. Oh, for some Dante-Darwin to write the latent romance of “Palolo and Francesca”! H.W. H. “Your bootlegger friend seems to be a very pleasant fellow.” “Oh, yes, he has his good pints.” comicbooks.com