Life, 1884-06-12 · page 3 of 16
Life — June 12, 1884 — page 3: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# "The Waning of the Honeymoon" This cartoon satirizes early marriage dynamics. A wife urges her husband to stay home for coffee after dinner, but he refuses—"NO, IT KEEPS ME AWAKE." The joke contrasts romantic courtship with mundane married life: the husband prioritizes sleep over companionship, suggesting the "honeymoon period" (initial marital bliss) has ended and been replaced by domestic routine and the husband's indifference. The accompanying poem "Beggars' Horses" expresses nostalgia for a simpler life without society's material pressures and social obligations—critiquing the burdens of maintaining upper-class status through possessions and fashion ("Top-coats and over-gaiters"). The "Boomlets" section contains brief satirical quips about contemporary figures and politics, including references to General Grant and various social figures.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
THE WANING OF THE HONEYMOON.—Scene, Richfield Springs. Wife (to husband who has promised to spend the evening at home): Do TAKE SOME COFFEE. Hubby: No, 1T KEEPS ME AWAKE, BEGGARS’ HORSES. WISH that altitude of tone, The waist-band’s due expansion, The faculty to hold one’s own In this and t’ other mansion ; And shirts and shoes and moral force, Top-coats and over-gaiters, Were things that always came of course To philosophic waiters. I wish that not by twos and threes, In squads, and plural numbers, Young women would destroy one’s ease Of mind, and route one’s slumbers ; But that, if by a poor heart's squirms Their pleasures know accession, They 'd hold it for successive terms In several possession. I wish I had been changed at birth, And in my place maturing Some infant of surpassing worth, Industrious past curing, Had grown up subject to-my share In Father Adam’s blunder, And left me free to pile up care For him to stagger under ! | | I wish that some things could be had Without foregoing others ; That all the joys that are not bad Were not weighed down with bothers. We can but wonder as we test The scheme of compensations— Is happiness with drawbacks best, Or grief with consolations ? BOOMLETS. A FACETIOUS New York daily announces the arrest of Jas. D. Fish thus : FISH HOOKED ! It really looks as if he did:; but what is the use of this slangy reiteration ? * * * GENERAL Grant is evidently not versed in Ward politics. * * * Au me! I was too beautiful to last.—Roscoe Conkling. * * * I now spell my last name with a K.— John C. Keno. * * * Grant to Fish: “1 intend to fight it out on this line!” Fish to Grant: “It will probably take all summer. Go ahead!” comicbooks.com