Life — September 23, 1886 — page 11: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

GALLANTRY. LD Mr. Snooks is an invet- erate wag. He lives at a large boarding house on West 14th street. In the same house live a couple of young dry goods clerks. They are both of the genus. dude, and affect an air of extreme and feminine languor which Mr. Snooks declares makes him sick at his stomach. The other morning, just after Mr. Snooks had taken his seat at the breakfast table, the two young exquisites lolled into the room and sank into their chairs. “Geawge,” drawled one of them to the waiter, “wait on us im- mediately.” “But,” said the waiter, “Mr. Snooks was in ahead of you, sir; I’m waiting on. him.” “Weah in a huhwy, Geawge, and must be waited on!” In despair, George turned to Mr. Snooks. “What shall I do, sir?” “George!” said Snooks, severely and audibly, “always wait on the ladies first!” The dudes now express the opin- ion that Mr. Snooks is a coarse, brutal man—“ sells potatoes on Chambahs street, y’know.” TOO SWEET FOR ANYTHING! “HERE'S TO HEROD.” T is a strange and inexplicable fact that, as soon as the average American female comes into the possession of | an infant, she, together with the infant, spends most of her available time in traveling in the “ steam cars.” Carefully taken statistics show that in a series of ten jour- neys of fifty miles each, the smallest number of infants of a yellable age was four to each car, and the highest average, | eleven. How seldom you make a railway journey nowadays with- out having in the seat directly in front of you a bedraggled and perspiring female_bearing over her shoulder a diabolical kid. The child hangs in a helpless way over the back of the seat and stares at you in a half surprised, half idiotic manner. | He is permeated with an odor which resembles a combina- tion of sour milk and roses. He is plentifully supplied with hiccoughs and strange internal rumblings, with now and then a noise like a pump that refuses to “suck.” runs copiously, and he is alternately drooling, making bubbles or frothing at the mouth. In other respects he is also like all other infants; he has the same faint down on his head, the same bulging forehead, goggle-blue eyes, baggy cheeks, zero- His nose | SINGULAR ANTICS OF A CAB IN UNION SQUARE, 1 A. M., AS SEEN BY YOUNG MR. VANDERSMELT. | shaped mouth and the same pug nose without the faintest trace of a bridge. His head seems but partially attached to his body, and rolls helplessly about as though it might drop off at any moment. And there the thing hangs, staring blankly at you. Two women in the seat behind you lean forward cooing at it, and remark that it is “‘swch a dear, just too sweet for any- thing!” and then an elderly female over the way screws her face up at it and says “Tooty-tooty, googy-googy!” and still another observes that it is“ sch a handsome child!” and wants to know if “he is a boy or girl?” The mother of the enigma swells with pride, and smiling until the clasps of her upper set | ‘of teeth glisten in the sunlight replies that “he is a girl,” and moreover, that he is as good as he is beautiful and “never, never cries,” whereupon the little fiend in question opens its mouth like a tomb door, opens it so wide that the whole upper half of its face goes over to the back of its head, and proceeds to yell loud enough to wake the dead of the antipodes. That such a diminutive, weak, and helpless creature can make such an astounding noise, and keep it up hour after hour without taking breath, is truly remarkable; no grown man, however powerful, can begin to do it, and it seems truly a pity that all this wind and power—enough to drive a mill ora g comicbooks.com y