Life, 1926-02-18 · page 24 of 36
Life — February 18, 1926 — page 24: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This humorous piece parodies whimsical, nonsensical poetry (in the style of Edward Lear or similar Victorian absurdist verse). The unnamed author catalogs the ridiculous daily activities of monkeys—whistling and chasing fleas on Mondays, sewing chicken teeth onto hats on Wednesdays, gargling gravel, pickled shoes, and attending movies. The satire works on multiple levels: it mocks the pretentious style of earnest nature poetry and children's instructional verse popular in the era, while the monkeys' increasingly illogical behaviors suggest commentary on human absurdity itself. The illustrations show monkeys engaged in these silly activities. The joke is partly *that* there is no coherent point—the humor lies in the accumulation of ridiculous, impossible actions presented with mock-serious poetic earnestness. It's essentially nonsense-satire, poking fun at both animal-behavior literature and Victorian literary conventions through deliberate incoherence.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
‘ LIFE * M_O N K E Y .B5B U S$ _ I our subject peering into 2 mirror.) Listen, my children and lo! I Shall sing of monkeys what blooms in the Spring, tra lat Of the wonderful §3\F}s what they tells and they twists ‘over what 3 from him. Gna TESTU and the watches they wears on their ritzy young wrists and the notches they gnaws in their shins and their fists on Monkeymas day in the morning. On Mondays they whistles and chases their fleas, Tuesdays they does as they please, tra la! Wednesdays they sews chicken teeth on their hats, —_| Cad Thursdays they weaves safety pins into mats, Friday’ devoted But see ‘em on Sunday and gasp at their gall; Sunday's the best day of all, tra la! p just as soon as the daylight is lit, __ monkey wrench _} breakfast of beeswax and “cocoanut split’, then a conniption to make ‘em feel fit, . followed by ‘fleas off your neighbors”. | | Full set of gloves for monkey | pride and ditto of kicks for her| Catch. (from a menkey bridal Layette) This day they talks backwards and swears at the flies, sovlfully crossing their eyes, tra la! Gargles with gravel and pickles their shoes, (monkey bite loes to the movies and rattles the pews, butters their knuckles and hollers the news. Then there's a lull in their labors. to fishing for bats and Saturday, that’s for adorning. For luncheon they stokes up on feathers and cream, (feathers is fodder, *twould seem, tra la!) feathers and cream and a soup of shellac, 2 pansy ofeer | | burbank has monkeyed with it, shavings for entree and snails by the stack; bib on the tummy and two on the back; blither and bother and blather ! | | [evolution -from the eff tothe mockey| While one monkey sleeps two more chases the fleas, chase ‘em by twos and by threes, tra la! Forty sees one tie his tail in a knot, Led our Subject Keeping a dog from| __Worrying over being adog. | fifty swims out in the mud if they're hot, Sixty does something and I don't know what. Talk about tar, if you'd rather.