Life, 1929-08-16 · page 15 of 36
Life — August 16, 1929 — page 15: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page from *Life* magazine presents a humorous domestic narrative by Baird Leonard set in Cooperstown, N.Y. The text satirizes 1920s social anxieties about debt and financial propriety. The upper cartoon shows a man and woman discussing business ethics—"no good business man was ever out of debt"—mocking contemporary attitudes toward financial obligations. The lower cartoon depicts what appears to be a portrait-sitting or art appraisal, with the caption "Couldn't you raise the eyebrows a little more? We want class y'understand," poking fun at affectation and pretensions to gentility. Together, these pieces humorously critique middle-class obsessions with respectability, financial standing, and social appearance during the post-WWI era.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Wee Pept Diary by Cooprrstown, N. Y., Jury Baird 24—Breakfast on melon, Leonard coffee and two eggs from a white Leghorn pullet, which I have lately learned are the choicest in the world, and then ponder- ing this and that, in especial my satis- faction with Samuel as a spouse, albeit I do seldom admit the same to him, being a lifelong profiter from journal- istic advice to the lovelorn, which has also taught me not to make direct in- quiry of him as to his affection for myscl{, so T am obliged to determine the latter by extracting material favors, probably causing him to regard me secretly as an undemonstrative wretch and the world’s ranking gold-digger. Lord! it is only by the exercise of the most adroit histrionism that I do not at times appear a fatuous fool akin to the sweet Alice of Ben Bolt’s acquaint- ance. By motor to Albany, wondering, as we sped over the old Indian trails, ‘ “But Tom, | read the other day that no good business man was ever out of debt!” what my forbears who travelled them before the Revolution would have thought had they known that in 1920 one of their descendants would be go ing down to the city of New York for no good purpose beyond the trimming of her hair. An overdone piece of cold beef served me on the dining-car, so I requested a rarer cut and received one which had apparently been sliced for eet “Couldn't you raise the eyebrows a little more? We want class y'understand,.” me by angels, but when I laid knife to it, I did perceive that the original por- tion had been cleverly reddened on the outside with beetjuice, so I did sum- mon the steward and made so merry with him over his chef's resourceful- ness that he would take no pay for my second saucer of vanilla ice cream, and would have presented me with the en (Continued on Page 32) comicbooks.com