Life, 1887-03-03 · page 12 of 16
Life — March 3, 1887 — page 12: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Life Magazine Page 126: Satirical Vignettes This page contains several brief satirical sketches mocking contemporary society: **"A Practical Housekeeper"** ridicules a young bride's pretentious approach to household management—she claims expertise yet merely repeats her mother's instructions, shopping at expensive places like Tiffany's for groceries. Her horrified husband's expression signals the joke: her "practicality" is actually naive snobbery. **"A Remarkable People"** features Irish immigrants (indicated by dialect) marveling that Americans built a clock on the moon—obviously fantastical, satirizing both immigrant credulity and American boastfulness about technological progress. **Other brief jokes** mock various targets: the Knights of Labor (a labor union), naval policy, landlords profiting from boarders' leftovers, and rural life. The cartoons reflect late-19th-century American anxieties: class pretension, immigrant stereotypes, labor unrest, and modernization. The humor relies on exaggeration and dialect to demean working-class and immigrant subjects while gently needling the wealthy.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
A PRACTICAL HOUSEKEEPER. | | | RIDE: You know, Charley dear, I am | so practical. I know all about house- | keeping. Mamma says I am to goto Brown's | for meat, and to Jones’s for vegetables ; of course groceries and that sort of thing I get at Tiffany's. Horror and despair depicted on the face of young husband. TT Knights of Labor should be given arrest.” PAIN has a cruiser that runs over the water at the rate of twenty-seven and | a-half miles per hour. Our Secretary of the Navy should purchase | a vessel of this sort for our approaching war. It would help us to get away with colors. flying. A WELL-FED ANIMAL. N EW Boarner: Nice cat —awful fat, ain't it? LaNDLADY: Yes. It eats up all the boarders can't eat. New Boarper: Ah, that accounts for it! MOTTOES FOR THE MILLION. THE better the day, the better the dude. A REMARKABLE PEOPLE. THERE is no cash in last year's ves: It is a large foot that wears a 13 shoe. First New Arrival: ARRAN, MICKEY, AN’ THIM IMIRICANS BATE THE WURRLED MEN, like bottles, should be corked when FUR INVINTIONS! MURTHER ME OYES, RUT IF THEY AIN'T GONE AN’ constHRUCT- | (11 ED A CLOCK IN TH’ MOON! | . LITERARY ITEMS. $1,250 M* GLADSTONE received 500 > for his reply to | 350 i * Locksley Hall,” sixty years after. It is interesting to know this. How much Tennyson got for the poem is not made public, but anything less than ten years and a big fine is inadequate remuneration. GENTLEMAN writes to the Evening Post on the subject of spirits and beer. One point he fails to make is that too much beer makes one lose one's spirits, while an over indulgence in spirits is | only too likely to result in a premature bier. | ROUGH ON MUAY. HILE strolling along on the quay, INSPIRATION. A maiden I happened to suay; | Farmer : To THINK OF OUR LAST COW BEIN' LEFT OUT AND So as she came nigh FROZE STIFF! I winked my right eigh, Wife: | TELL YER WHAT WE KIN DO; KEEP HER TILL SUM- Which caused the coy damsel to fluay. MER AND SELi UEK TO THE BOARDERS FOR ICE-CREAM. comicbooks.com