Life, 1929-04-19 · page 25 of 52
Life — April 19, 1929 — page 25: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains several brief humorous pieces typical of early 20th-century American satire: **"Washing the Dog"** is a comedic instruction piece by W. Boyce Morgan depicting the chaos of bathing a dog named Towser. The joke relies on the absurdity of the steps—requiring four hands, the dog repeatedly escaping, and ultimately suggesting sending the dog to a dry-cleaner and drinking the mange cure. It satirizes domestic frustration and the impossibility of the task. The other small jokes mock contemporary concerns: a "companionate bride" (a 1920s concept of marriage partners as equals), confusion about monkeys in Mexico, and a driver misapplying Einstein's relativity theory to traffic violations. The cartoons show a car at a garage, and a scene captioned "The great American Rockies" with people in rocking chairs, and a final image mocking repetitive music selection, likely at a social venue. The page exemplifies Life's style: irreverent, domestic-focused humor targeting middle-class readers' everyday frustrations and pretensions.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Washing the Dog 1. On the way home from the of- fice, purchase one cake flea-soap, one bottle mange cure, one stiff scrubbing brush, one pair rubber gloves, one slicker, one pair wading boots, one pork-chop, and one dozen roses. The last item will soothe the wife’s feel- ings when Towser shakes himself on the best bed-spread. 2. Enter apartment, keeping pack- ages well concealed. Speak to Tow- ser in a friendly fashion and kiss wife, or vice versa. 3. Lock wife in bed room. Fill bathtub with water. 4. Undress as though it were you who was getting the bath. This won't fool the dog, but it may fool your wife. 5. Entice Towser from beneath piano with pork-chop. After locking him in bathroom, take pork-chop to kitchen to be fried for supper. 6. Don slicker, rubber gloves and wading boots and return to bathroom. Extract Towser from beneath bathtub. How? That's your problem. 7. Climb into tub, pulling Towser in after you. Grasp Towser in one hand, soap in other, brush in third hand, mange cure in fourth. If you haven’t four hands, whose fault is it? You should have been born twins. 8. Pull Towser down off medicine cabinet. Repeat paragraph 7. 9. Repeat paragraph 8. Towser then having escaped from bathroom, repeat paragraphs 5, 6, 7 and 8. 1o. Repeat paragraph 9. 11. Send Towser to dry-cleaner’s. Drink mange cure. W. Boyce Morgan. Swe: What would you do if I agreed to become your companionate bride? He: Dishes. Gent: I've just been reading about the guerrilla warfare in Mexico. Gat: My Gosh, don’t tell me that there’s monkeys fighting down there. Money does not buy love. Money does not buy the law, or a position in society, or the respect of other men, or their souls. Counterfeit money, we mean, 7 Cop: Ye've run past the signal. “Not according to Einstein’s theory, Officer—I’m eight feet back of it and on the next streetl” “For the love of Pete! Can't they give us anything but ‘The Gypsy Love Song?’ ” comicbooks.com