Life, 1883-09-06 · page 12 of 16
Life — September 6, 1883 — page 12: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Podge's Holiday This is a multi-panel comic strip satirizing Victorian social anxieties, particularly male embarrassment around the opposite sex. "Podge," a bashful bachelor seeking seaside solitude, encounters a woman at the beach. When she appears, he panics—apparently having lost his clothes or left them behind. The humor relies on Victorian propriety: Podge's frantic attempts to communicate ("M-m-m-m-a D-A-M") and hide his predicament using seaweed, his desperate pleas for the woman to leave ("PLEASE M-M-MOVEON"), and his ultimate flight from the scene. The comic mocks both male prudishness and the social terror of impropriety. The Latin phrase "CUM DIGNITATE" (with dignity) underscores the irony—Podge's complete loss of composure.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
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