Judge — October 22, 1887 — page 16: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This page contains two related satirical cartoons mocking rural visitors to the city who are unfamiliar with modern gas lighting. **The Setup:** A country person (depicted with rural dialect: "Wall, by Goll!") arrives at a city hotel and encounters gas lamps instead of candles. The satire plays on the contrast between rural and urban life in the late 19th/early 20th century. **The Joke:** The rural visitor plans to take the gas lamp to bed, mistaking it for a portable light source like a candle. He jokes he'll "put out the lamp" (meaning extinguish it by blowing) to save effort—not understanding that gas lamps operate on a fixed supply and cannot simply be blown out like candles. **The Point:** The cartoons mock rural ignorance of modern city conveniences and technology. The repeated captions ("Don't Blow Out the Gas") emphasize the dangerous absurdity—blowing out gas lamps could be hazardous. This reflects Judge magazine's urban readership laughing at perceived backwardness of country folk encountering metropolitan modernity.