Judge, 1887-12-31 · page 9 of 18
Judge — December 31, 1887 — page 9: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page satirizes **urban passenger behavior**, particularly elderly women exiting streetcars/trolleys. The main cartoon depicts an old lady with multiple belongings (basket, bag, birdcage, umbrella) treating her exit as a chaotic military operation. She imagines a paranoid plot—that crowds entering the rear door are actually masked robbers waiting to attack her—so she charges violently down the aisle instead, creating actual havoc. The satire mocks how ordinary urban transit becomes inflated into melodrama in the minds of anxious passengers. Her umbrella, basket, and bag become weapons of mass inconvenience to fellow passengers. The piece humorously exaggerates her caution about stepping onto the platform, literally testing the ground exists before descending. The accompanying text and smaller cartoons provide social commentary on gift-giving and absurd excuses, suggesting broader critique of late 19th/early 20th-century American manners and urban life.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
JUDGE look out. You see, he has formed the errone- Ado —1 | | ous idea that all glass is opaque. See! he | | doesn’t look out with his eyes. He leans far out and looks with his shoulder-blades. Watch the old lady leave the car, She has | | her basket, her bag, her bird-cage and her unt . brella, With her basket she can push a man clear over the back of a car seat. With her bag she can slap his hat over his eyes without look- ing at him. With her birdeage she can muss ir of any woman whom she passes. Aud vith her umbrella she can stab people before her in the back and put out the eyes of people behind her, She sets out to leave the ear by the toy ashe gue, font door.’ But only one or two y along. to be going that way, and turning her sees a lot of people crowding into the car by the rear door, Instantly it occurs to her that a route so popul: tainly be the best. She turns and charges down the i tung earnestly the best seats, struggle fier them. The old lady, fixing her piercing es way for liberty and egress. People cry out, The other yy them- : It flashes upon’ her with the : It is a plot to get her out of the lonely end of the car, where four masked men with blackened faces are waiting to rob and murder her, and then whisk her off into a private lunatic asylum, She remembers vow sew She turns and charges down the aisle. e conductor go out at that coor, and beckon her to follow him. He is in league with the robbers. She will gain the rear door or die. She crashes and plunges fa incoming procession, leaving a chaotic wre and ba in her wake, and hes the door at last, herself a wreck. With a triumphant glare the baffled conductor, who has come into the to look for her, the dear old soul backs down the car steps, hangs on to the hand rail, and reachin:: id out with one foot, feels around for the planet we inhabit the globe at last, she taps it cautiously with her foot once ov twice, to inake sure that it is there, and will not suddenly shoot away into space as she comes down, and so descends, stands safely on the platform, and in her blessed old heart gives grateful thanks for safe rance, and carries her sweet old face, her many bundles and her. - acious pockets up to some home that will lose three-fifths of its sunshine when grandma niakes her last journey and is received with. 1 bundle or package, a trouble or a fear, by the angels who must sometimes grow a little impatient waiting for her. RESECTED ADDRESSES. Disarrorsten sciton—" Well! That's what I call treating a man badly behind his back" APPROPRIATE PRESENTS FOR EVERYBODY. your sweet-heart—-A kiss. your minister—A pair of slippers. For your enemy—A box of bad cigars. For your friend—A three-weeks-old pup.- For your wife—A receipted bill for her last bonnet. For your husband —A nice card sprinkled with angels and stars If you adhere to the above rules it will cost you very little, yet rybody will think that you meant it all for the best, and the next r they will each of them give you something better. HE MEANT WELL, “What kind of a horn are you going to take with the house 7” ed the b; er, setting them up. HIS SENSE OF SMELL GONE. replied Pat; “ez it's Christmas, O1 giss Oil toike a ee eT ec ane Dane & Anat grane horn, with hay fever all the year round comicbooks.com