Life, 1886-09-16 · page 7 of 16
Life — September 16, 1886 — page 7: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# "The Latest Thing in Hose" - Life Magazine Cartoon This comic strip satirizes the fashionable activity of using a garden hose, likely a relatively new household convenience at the time. The sequence shows a woman and child using increasingly elaborate and comedic methods to manage a hose—wrapping it around themselves, struggling with its unwieldy length, and ultimately getting tangled or knocked down by water pressure. The humor lies in contrasting the hose's promised practicality with the actual chaotic results. The title's phrase "latest thing" mocks how Americans quickly adopted new technologies as status symbols, even when they created more problems than solutions. This reflects early-20th-century satire about consumer culture and domestic life.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
A SENSIBLE THING TO DO. RS. DE HOBSON: Yes, Clara's hus- band is a civil engineer, or something of that sort, in Dakota, and as the poor girl is going out there to live I thought it would be a sensible thing to buy her a wedding present that would be useful instead of merely ornamental. MRS. CLARKE BROWNE: That was very thoughtful of you, I am sure. What did you give her? Mrs. DE Hopson: A solid silver button-hook. THE ties formed at sociables sometimes lead to matrimonial knots. ACOOL base-ball player — The ice-pitcher. A Warm place for a Summer hotel — Fire Island. BENEFICIAL ANY TIME. pres : You are to take this mixture after meals. PooR PATIENT: But it’sivery seldom, doctor, that I get a meal. PHYSICIAN: In_ that case, take it before meals. THE SPECTRAL COMPLEXION. HOME JOTTINGS. HEY were lovers, and fain they would wed ; LD topers are grieved at the decline in bar silver. On his breast she had nestled her head, He glanced down and fainted, Her cheeks they had painted His only clean shirt bosom red. Editor Cutting was prudent enough to leave his shirt on this side of the Rio Grande when he invaded the enemy's country. A St. Louis German, who attended the Milwaukee Saenger- fest, has a flourishing hop-vine growing out of the back of THE NEW CREED, . his neck. 6“ HY don’t you get to work and make some money ?” said a gentleman to a man he knew, who was idling away his time among a gang of boycotters. “T don’t want to make any more money,” replied the man, in the true socialistic spirit; ‘there’s already enough in the world for us all.” THE speeches of the anarchists are aptto be bombastic. As soon as the New York Chinese finish their new temple to Buddha and Joss, they will send a missionary to Boston and paganize the town. M. comicbooks.com