Life, 1926-05-13 · page 33 of 52
Life — May 13, 1926 — page 33: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains three satirical pieces targeting American social conventions: **Top cartoon**: A schoolroom joke where a teacher asks what "turneth away wrath" (biblical reference to gentle answers). A boy named Elwood answers "a speak-easy"—mocking Prohibition-era hypocrisy by suggesting alcohol, not virtue, prevents conflict. **"The Summer Sonata"**: A husband's extended complaint about his wife's annual spring monologue about vacation destinations (mountains vs. seashore). He satirizes her elaborate, breathless persuasive tactics while noting the outcome remains predetermined anyway. The joke: her elaborate rhetorical "performance" is pointless theater since he'll be dragged to the same place yearly. **Bottom cartoon**: Two small dogs engage in exaggerated tough-guy posturing, calling each other "two-fisted he-bull-man" and "one-hundred-per-centaur"—mocking masculine bravado and overblown ego in miniature form. All three pieces target predictable human behavior: moral compromise, marital dynamics, and inflated self-importance.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Teacher: AND WHAT IS IT, ELWOOD, THAT “TURNETH AWAY WRATH”? HE little woman's (God bless her! ’s) conversation has hitherto been the usual symphony of clothes, the Follies, the Skidmores’ new sedan, Fifth Avenue stores and bridge, developed with the calm-eyed, deep- bosomed virtuosity of the American woman concerned with those topics. But along about April she begins to narrow herself to the sonata form. The first movement opens with the Adirondack or mountains theme, an- nounced ff and at once succeeded by an even louder statement of the Bar Har- bor or seashore theme, These are im- mediately developed as a free fugue, in which secondary themes, such as which is better for the children, ozone, bungalow rent, neighbors, bathing and boating facilities, golf, everybody is going there this year, insects, coolness and fresh fish are ingeniously inter- laced. It has eight or ten other move- ments (to this extent departing from convention) all allegro con fuoco in tempo, the last going into a finale prestissimo furiosissimo which leaves the performer breathless and me limp. Now if there were any practical reason for this annual recital I shouldn't mind so much. But all the time I Elwood (thinking hard): A SPEAK-EASY. The Summer Sonata know that in the end will come a reaction which will shunt us either to Spoon Lake in the Catskills or Badly Beach at the seashore, just as usual and just as it has shunted every other brother he-man annually and will shunt him until time-tables shall be no more. So that is why, after I have heard the calm-eyed partner of my joys and “MR. MINOTAUR, YOU'RE A REAL TWO-PISTED HE-! sorrows render the Sonata Hegira all through April every year, I sometimes find myself wishing— Baron Ireland. OPSY: I thought you were going to marry Dick. Frorsy: I would have if he hadn't asked me. es cee Pe ty LL-MAN |" “SHAKE! YOU'RE A ONE-HUNDRED-PER-CENTAUR YOURSELF |” comicbooks.com