Judge — November 11, 1916 — page 13: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This is a single-panel joke illustrated with an ink sketch showing two young women in the foreground at what appears to be a college social gathering, with other students visible in the background near college buildings. The humor relies on a play on words about "taking someone seriously." The joke suggests that Jack's request for Ethel to "take him seriously" was actually a marriage proposal—and she accepted it literally as such. The comedy derives from the ambiguity: what Jack may have meant as a casual request for respect in conversation was misinterpreted (or perhaps shrewdly interpreted) by Ethel as a proposal of marriage. The setting at Oberlin College, a real American college, grounds this in contemporary campus social life and courtship customs of the era.