Life, 1886-11-25 · page 11 of 16
Life — November 25, 1886 — page 11: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Explaining Life Magazine Page 327 This page from *Life* magazine—America's premier satirical weekly—collects brief jokes and humorous observations on contemporary social life, circa early 20th century. **Key satirical targets:** - **"The Doctor"**: Mocks both physicians' vague diagnoses and patients' gullible acceptance of medical advice. - **"Electric button" joke**: Criticizes Americans' embrace of new technology as inherently amusing rather than practical. - **"After the Funeral"**: Uses exaggerated ethnic dialect (German-Jewish accent) for humor at immigrants' expense—a period convention. - **The large illustration** captioned "A New Reading" satirizes newspaper consumption: men absorbed in scandal and crime coverage while claiming newspapers are "great educators." - **"Not Wasting Away Much"**: Dark humor about a man losing weight because his wife left him—treating marital abandonment as comedic. - **Dr. Mary Walker reference**: Assumes readers know this was a real woman doctor/women's rights advocate, used here to mock female ambition. The page reflects *Life*'s target audience: educated urban readers who enjoyed satirizing social pretension, immigrant stereotypes, and modern anxieties.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
73 ID your former physician give you THE DOCTOR. | a diagnosis, Madam?” Mrs. A.: “No, Doctor, he only gave me iron, but I’m willing to take one if you think it would do me any good.” N place of the chestnut bell, we now have the electric button. You are invited to press it, and the point of a needle runs into the finger. We are a humorous nation. AFTER THE FUNERAL. R. C.: “Mine Crazious, I forgod to daig oud dot new sed off false deeth dot Rebecca got last Sommer und dey vos on a golt plade, too!” APAN boasts of a singing fish. Probably a bass. YOUNG man out West stole money from the post-office in which he was employed, to pay his wife’s dressmaking bills. He didn’t rob Peter to pay Paul, but he robbed the mail to pay the female. EN-PECKED husbands are con- stanlty reminded that a thing of beauty is a jaw forever. ELDOM fails to get the hang of it— The executioner. - LIFE: 327 Hush! Papa Is READING HIS PAPER. DO NOT DISTURB HIM, FOR THE DAILY PAPER IS THE ‘GREAT EDUCATOR OF THE PEOPLE.” HE HAS FINISHED THE MURDERS, OUTRAGES AND MINOR HORRORS, AND IS-NOW IN THE MIDST OF SOME | JUICY DETAILS OF THE LATEST SCANDAL. BE SILENT OR YOU MAY INTERRUPT | HIS EDUCATION. | A NEW READING. | NOT WASTING AWAY MUCH. | ROWN: You are looking well, Robinson. RoBINsoNn: Yes, and feeling well; but | nevertheless I lost a hundred and twenty pounds of flesh last month. Brown: That ’s not possible! ROBINSON: Yes it is. My wife ran off with a Sunday-school superintendent. CRAZY woman in Philadelphia thinks that Dr. Mary Walker is her mother. She must be hopelessly insane. If she thought that the doctor was her father, there might be some hope for her. MONG the fashionable people of Chicago, pie is now rarely seen at the breakfast table. MAN in Morrisburg, Canada, has a | trunk two hundred and fifty years old. It has never used tobacco in any form, and can read fine print without spectacles. | CHRISTMAS story—‘“I don’t expect anything this year.” comichhooks.coly)