Life, 1926-01-28 · page 22 of 36
Life — January 28, 1926 — page 22: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
The top illustration depicts a social scene from the 1890s featuring "bamboo portieres" (decorative curtains made of bamboo strips that were fashionable then). The cartoon's joke is that these trendy interior decorations were a "social hazard"—the bamboo strips would trap unwary guests, presumably catching clothing or causing embarrassing entanglements at parties. Below are three humorous pieces: a mock-philosophical poem about the frustrations of maintaining a coal furnace (poking fun at domestic life's tedious realities), a brief romantic anecdote about a man who finds his "ideal girl" only to discover she keeps letters from another man (suggesting women's romantic autonomy), and a one-line joke defining "reformer" as someone with worse hangovers than average (satirizing temperance or social reform advocates). The page satirizes both 1890s fashion hazards and domestic/social pretensions.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
THE GAY NINETIES THE BAMBOO PORTIERES, A SOCIAL HAZARD OF THE FESTIVE NINETIES WHICH, SOONER OR LATER, MANAGED TO TRAP EVEN THE WARIEST, Lines Written in a Furnace Room URNACE fires do not respond to absent treatment. A clinker in the hand is less irritating than one in the grate. A clean coal cellar is not so nice as one dirty with a lot of twenty-one-dollar coal. Kindling is more to be desired than riches A lot of paper burns a long time, but what of it? Coal carefully placed on top of the kindling will seck its level, the bottom of the ash bin, before a match can be struck. A coal scoop is three inches narrower than the furnace door at the beginning of the “fire-maker’s” three inches wider at its sudden termi swing, and ation Coal heaped on a shovel which strikes the furnace door will fly farther than the man could throw it by hand. A man is not a quitter if he gives up trying to revive the fire after thirty-five minutes of labor and nervous strain. Men can be hired to look after furnaces. Thank God! J.C. Be Errant I AM no longer young. I have traveled far and wide. All my life has been spent searching for my ideal girl. Imagine my joy, therefore, when yesterday I thought I had found her. She was perfect, passing every mark of exci lence I had set for her. To-day I found that she kept lette: To-morrow I start again on my travels. D.H.B. EFINITION—A reformer is a man who suffers worse hangovers than most people. comicbooks.com