Life, 1927-04-21 · page 21 of 39
Life — April 21, 1927 — page 21: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is absurdist humor mocking both the sport of beagling (hunting with beagle dogs) and pretentious sporting culture. Sullivan's satire works through deliberate nonsense: he treats absurd requirements (pumpkins, rime, specific coat colors) as serious prerequisites, then adds increasingly ridiculous pseudo-logic about beagles' preferences and "spawning time." The joke targets upper-class hunters who take themselves too seriously while obsessing over proper attire and sporting codes. The brief "Grounds for Divorce" joke at bottom satirizes intellectual snobbery—two people cannot coexist because they belong to rival book clubs (the Literary Guild and Book-of-the-Month Club were actual competing subscription services). The implication: cultured people can be just as absurdly incompatible over trivial status markers as sport enthusiasts. Both pieces mock pretension masquerading as sophistication.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
B Better Beagling ag AFTER all, for sheer sport, there is nothing like beagling, is there? One of those crisp autumn morn- ings, when the rime is on the pump- kins! Ah! The very thought sends the blood pounding. But you must have pumpkins. Oh, yes, you must ave pumpkins, else you'd have no place to put the rime. You'd have a lot of rime on your hands, and no place to put it. “And you know how easily rime spoils. S° first get your pumpkins. Then ' get yourself a good autumn, a good crisp autumn, and the job is more than half done, You still need a red coat. If you do not look well in red, then you will have to dye yourself the proper color, because in beagling the sportsman must wear a red coat. The beagles will pay no attention to any one not dressed in a red coat. I've seen hunters go ing in the most expensive Alice- blue hunting coats that money could buy, and what did the beagles do? y just laughed at these poor ninnics. You've seen beagles laugh, of course. They like their little joke, and they are entitled to it, in my opinion, TTHEN you don a coonskin coat to fool the beagle. Seeing your enormous hulk coming through the forest he will think you are a sophomore and will rise to the bait forthwith, That is, if it is the beagle’s spawning time. If it isn’t, you just simply might as well turn around and go home. How does one tell when the beagle’s spawning time is? you may ask. Easy. Wateh the beagle carefully. If he is moody, ir- ritable, choosy about his food and restless at night, spawning time can- not be far off. NOTHING gives me, I will con- fess, quite the kick I get from beagling. It should not, however, be confused with bugling, an entirely different sport. I Want to hear me? No? All right. Frank Sullivan. Grounds for Divorce “QO they couidn’t get along to- gether?” “No; he was a member of the Lit- erary Guild and she belonged to the Book-of-the-Month Club.” comicbooks.com