Life, 1927-02-03 · page 13 of 35
Life — February 3, 1927 — page 13: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains three distinct pieces of period humor: 1. **"History via the Comic Strip"** mocks historical scenes rendered as comic panels, featuring puns (Marie Antoinette at the guillotine, Sir Walter Raleigh's "footprints"). 2. **"Mrs. Peps Diary"** (January 11th) is a personal diary entry satirizing upper-class social pretensions—the diarist obsesses over trivial matters (Latin quotations, wagers at dinners) while claiming scholarly indifference. 3. **"Big Laughs of the Past"** collects antique jokes, including a Cornet of Horse pun on "Waterloo" and a jest about a grasshopper's existential remark ("Oh, Lord! How you made me jump!"). The humor relies on period wordplay and assumes readers' familiarity with classical references and Victorian mannerisms now largely obscure to modern audiences.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
History via the Comic Strip Scene: Versailles and 135th Street. HE MOB: Bread! We bread! Mane Antotnette (on the bal- cony): Bread, eh? Well, folks, play WATTATOOCHIE on the nose in the first race, and by this time to- morrow you'll all have a ROLL! (ZOWIE!) Scene: A Tavern in London, .. A LEMAN: Our gracious Queen, abeth, is some baby doll, eh, Walt? Sm Warrer Raveiou (removing his cloak and pointing to the distinct hoof prints of her Majesty thereon) : You said it. She’s THERE WITH BOTH FEET! (BOOM!) A Cell in the Bastille. : Give me three thousand crowns and I will tell you how you can escape. Tue Man wit tie Tron Mask: Here they are. How? want Big Laughs of the Past LEANDER TRIES TO PULL A GERTRUDE EDERLE AND FLOPS, the and Tur Jatrer money): Cateh BREAK OUT! (POW!) Se Outside Moscow. \ Cory or Horse: Napoleon, can you give me a sentence with the word “Waterloo” in it? Le Petry Caporatty: Decidedly not. Can you, my friend? Tue Cornet (coming out flat with it): WATERLOO do, when you are far away?... (AWK!) Henry William Hanemann. (pocketing the measles YOUR SPIRIT CONTROL IS VERY INOIFFERENT TONIGHT Ug ®\MRS. OBLON January Up betimes, having slept lth but little during the night for that some wretch had left papers near my window for the wind to rustle, and it is easier for a camel to go through the eve of a needle than for a woman in a sheer nightshift to arise in the cold and attend to such a matter. Three cheques by the morning post, adding to the considerable sum I have won by a wager which did come about In this wise: The other night at a din- ner I did rattle off, apropos of a point which I have forgotten, the Latin for “All Gaul is divided into three parts,” whereupon a gentleman across the table did question the curacy of my quotation, and it did develop that almost everybody present had a special ver: of his own to whi he stuck and on which he would wager, so that I took their various bets with some misgiv- ings, which did but increase as I made inquiries of others before I could come at a copy of the Commentaries and settle the dispute. How I, who am a mos t_ indifferent classical scholar, should come to have been right and — everybody else wrong does prove that Prov- idence moves in a mysterious way to keep me solvent at the bank, and furthermore refute my picions whilst reading Cesar that it would ever avail me aught, for I was wont to ask my father, “What's the use of my stud n? I shan’t ever go there ason for my victory, however, is that I was but trusting to the ear of memory, whilst the losers were ing themselves by hazy s of laws of grammar and syntax....In_ the hands of my sempstress all this day, and then to dine at the Kendalls’, where I did hear a tayle about a Scotchman who kept racing off and (Continued on page 32) does sus- WHAT WAS THE FIRST THING THE GRASSHOPPER SAID AFTER IT WAS CREATED ¢ comicbooks.com