Life, 1929-05-10 · page 17 of 44
Life — May 10, 1929 — page 17: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page features **"The Pop's Diary"** by Baird Leonard, a serialized humor column appearing in *Life* magazine (dated April 18). The entry mocks the author's pretensions about reading Edgar Wallace's autobiography, which inspires reflections on wealth, respectability, and social climbing. The **upper illustration** depicts what appears to be a courtroom or formal interrogation scene, captioned with dialogue about shooting someone in a crowd. This satirizes dramatic crime fiction popular in the era. The **lower cartoon** shows an elaborate contraption of household items and obstacles, captioned about "practicing climbing over obstacles to his bath" for beach season—mocking obsessive physical fitness routines and vanity. Together, these mock early-20th-century middle-class aspirations toward literary sophistication and physical self-improvement.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
b Aprit_ 18—Awake too be- bard times for my breakfast, so Leonard reading Edgar Wallace’s autobiography, wherein I did find these words: “Health and faith are the important things in life. Money doesn’t matter at all. At the worst, you can always do something discreditable and get money.” A passage far more dangerous, methinks, than anything I did come across in “Sixty Seconds,” for it set me to cast- ing about at once for something dis- creditable to do, my solvency being in a precarious condition at the mo- ment, yet I daresay the censors will not so much as notice it. Samuel, hearing my sentiments, vouchsafed that it were better for me to emulate Mr. Wallace's industry instead of his preachments, his literary output being so momentous and rapid that his motto must surely be “A book a day keeps the bailiff away.” Marge Boothby to luncheon, and I did give her onion soup and a fine, fat partridge flanked by tomato jelly and Waldorf salad, contenting myself with a simple dish of herbs about which I do still be- have like an unransomed saint, albeit Iam privately convinced that I could stand a little hatred in the atmosphere if it were accompanied by more than one hundred grams of stalled ox at “Suspicious character, Captain. I shot into a crowd and he was the only one I didn't hit.” any given sitting. M. did tell me about going yesterday to a matinee at which a woman who sat in front of them so glittered with diamonds as to transfix them utterly, and how after a searching appraisal, she had whis- pered to her companion, inaudibly, as she thought, “I don’t think those around her neck are genuine,” where upon the woman turned and quoth, “Indeed they are!” Home, to find there Sam, full of compliments for me from his cronies at the club, so, inasmuch as I had never met two or three of the gentlemen whom he named as fulsome in my praises, I did watch the frequency with which he raised his eyebrows, an infallible index when he is slightly in his cups. os bait Apri. 19—For breakfast thirty Practising climbing over obstacles to his bath, so as to be in trim for the grams of bacon, an insignificant item beach season. (Continued on Page 37) USE LIPE'S TICKET SERVICE comicbooks.com