Life, 1886-12-23 · page 12 of 18
Life — December 23, 1886 — page 12: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Life Magazine Page 404 Analysis This page contains two distinct pieces of satirical humor: **Top story "Delicately Put"** (by W.W. Walworth): A narrative joke about a cowboy's blunt diplomacy. At Fort Huachuca, Arizona, during a poker game with military officers and a visiting Jewish man, the cowboy accuses someone of cheating. Rather than tactfully addressing the accusation, he threatens to shoot out the cheater's "other eye"—a crude but effective deterrent. The satire contrasts the cowboy's unsophisticated but practical directness with the ineffectual politeness of "civilization." **Bottom cartoons**: Three sequential panels showing a grandfather buying toys. The humor appears to involve toys that malfunction or explode ("goes off"), resulting in the grandfather spending a "quiet evening at the station house" (jail)—suggesting the malfunctioning toy causes legal trouble or property damage. The page satirizes both frontier masculinity and modern toy safety through comedy.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
DELICATELY PUT. ALK of the untutored cowboy! He can often solve a situation that would puzzle the most tactful son of Civilization. It was at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, in | the club-room of the sutler’s store. Two: lieutenants, the doctor, a cowboy and a | one-eyed Jew, who was visiting the post | for the sake of the mountain air, had been: whiling- away the evening with a quiet. game of poker. The officers and the cowboy had also- whiled away most of the results of a year’s | defense of “Our Country” and long horn- ed steers, when the cowboy called for drinks all around. As the last glass was put down, the roamer of the plains made a few remarks, as he idly formed compass- es and triangles on the table with his beautifully mounted pistols. ‘Gentlemen, this has been somewhat of an unlucky game,” he drawled out, “I am under the necessity of considerin’ it otherwise than | a square game, and I'll remark right here, A QUESTION OF SOME IMPORT. | that I play a square game myself, and if ° the parties that have been doin’ the cheat- Say, JACKSON, DOES YER TINK DER PUP IS TOO WICIOUS TER KEEP IN LER RooM, | in’, does it agin, I shall feel myself under AN’ DAT SANTY CLAUS 'LL BE SKEERED OFF FROM COMIN’ DOWN DER CHIMLEY ? the necessity of shootin’ his other eye out.” : W. W. Walworth. GRANDPA BUYS ONE OF THOSE AND SO DOES GRANDPA FOR A SCIENTIFIC TOYS FOR ON THE WAY HOME IT ‘‘GOES OFF.” QUIET EVENING AT THE FREDDIE, STATION HOUSE. comicbooks.com