Judge, 1893-09-02 · page 16 of 16
Judge — September 2, 1893 — page 16: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This cartoon satirizes summer hotel proprietors' efforts to entertain female guests. The joke hinges on a gender imbalance: wealthy men could only visit their summer hotel retreats on weekends, leaving female guests—who stayed longer—without male companionship during weekdays. The proprietor's "scheme" is to display painted statues of men around the grounds as decorative company for bored women. It's a tongue-in-cheek commentary on the leisure habits of the Gilded Age upper class, where summer resorts were popular destinations and the separation of genders by work schedules created social awkwardness. The humor derives from the absurdity of substituting statuary for actual male attention—a practical (if ridiculous) solution to a real social problem of the era.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
comicbooks.com epee z Seis SS A SCHEME OF NECESSITY. STRANGER—* Why on earth have you got your grounds full of statues of dudes, and all painted up too?” SUMMER-HOTEL PROPRIETOR—“ That's a little scheme of my own for keeping the young ladies from getting lonely. You see the gentlemen are here on Sundays only.”