Life, 1926-09-23 · page 26 of 40
Life — September 23, 1926 — page 26: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a page from *Life* magazine featuring "Mrs. Pep's Diary," a humorous column. The top cartoon satirizes reckless boating—a woman warns her friend Frank that when she boards his sailboat, he must not exceed twenty miles per hour, likely a jab at wealthy leisure-class show-offs who speed dangerously on lakes. The diary entry below is comedic domestic narrative: the author describes swatting flies with crusader-like determination, then gossiping about celebrity memoirs ("More Uncensored Recollections"), before recounting a mishap where she drifts helplessly on a lake after her husband fails to secure the boat. Her husband Sam comically runs along the shore nearly naked with a boathook, looking like "Neptune," which she fears will make rescuers think he's a lunatic. The humor targets upper-class leisure activities, marital mishaps, and vanity—typical satirical fare for *Life* magazine's educated, affluent readership.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Auntie: August Tossing restlessly through- 30th out the break of day cause of two or three fl which kept torturing me into w fulness and at which I struck vainly with all the inefficacy of a drugged person, dreaming in my fitful inter- vals of slumber that I was lying s on a battlefield with the Valkyrie swooping down upon me and not quite making the grade, so finally up and arrayed myself with grim deter- mination, and summoning a servant to fetch me a fly-swatter, I did start upon a campaign of destruction with a zeal not inferior to that which characterized the campaigns of the old Crusaders, nor did I cease, neither, until the bodies of my tor- mentors lay lifeless upon window- seat and counterpane. Reading all the morning in a book called “More Uncensored Recollections,” wherein a man who has no small opinion of himself. tells this and that about vari- ous bigwigs whom he has known, and albeit the majority of them meant no more to me than I to Hecuba, I NOW REMEMBER, FRANK—WIIEN YOURS, UNDER 20 CIRCUMSTAN ES ARE MILES AN HOUR. did attend as eagerly as though I were sitting in front of the stove at a crossroads store. Lord! how I do love gossip! And albeit I hold with those who consider it an insufficient basis for opinion, I do think those who self-righteously refuse to listen to it miss a great deal in life. In fact, I am inclined to be as suspicious of the man who docs not relish a juicy morsel of scandal as I am of the man who has no music in his breast or does not like ice cream. Off 1 GET ABOARD THAT SAIL-BOAT OF YOU TO GO FASTER THAN TWENTY on the lake for Iuncheon in the Jaunch with my husband, and _ the poor wretch, attempting a landing at the tower dock unaided, did have so poor a purchase on the rope that I did drift off helpless towards the middle of Otsego, whereupon Sam, doffing his breeches and arming him- self with a boathook, did start run- ning along the shore, looking utterly ridiculous and not a little unlike Neptu so that I was forced to laugh in spite of my potential peril, and I did fear that any oncoming boatman who might answer Sam's signal might mistake him for a lunatic, and, considering the time of . his attire and the weapon he was brandishing, be afraid to heed his summons, for I had drifted well to the other side of the lake and neither my distress nor my connec tion with him was apparent. Two men in a speed craft finally to his rescue, and when I did hear him add to his request to be put aboard the (Continued on page 32) comicbooks.com