"Have You Met Him Socially?" "Dear Me, No, Only in a Business Way — I Married His Daughter"

Gibson stages his comedy of plutocratic manners in what reads as a club lobby or hotel corridor. At left, two top-hatted men in morning coats exchange the caption's arch dialogue — one gesturing with a cigar, one with a gloved hand. At right, a tall, thin magnate stoops toward a small newsboy who points up at him with candid impertinence, underscoring the class ironies running through the whole scene; a cluster of similarly attired gentlemen mills in the background. The joke cuts at Gilded Age social climbing: marrying into wealth substitutes for genuine society membership. Gibson's line work is at its crispest — striped trousers, silk lapels, precise physiognomy — the elegance of the draftsmanship making the satire on American nouveaux riches all the sharper.