Life, 1887-07-28 · page 12 of 16
Life — July 28, 1887 — page 12: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Life Magazine Page 54 Explanation This page contains several satirical vignettes typical of Life's humor: **"Only the Children"**: A job applicant claims expertise with children but then prioritizes the employer's dog over childcare—satirizing insincere job candidates who tell employers what they want to hear. **"An Excellent Home Motto"**: A woman seeks a parlor motto; the clerk suggests "God Bless our Home," but she finds it old-fashioned. The satire mocks both outdated domestic piety and the commercialization of home sentiment. **Irish Catholics/Orange Blossoms**: A topical reference to Irish Catholic boycotts of orange imagery (associated with Protestant/British identity), extending even to wedding flowers—satirizing the intensity of sectarian tensions in America. **"A Long-Felt Want"**: A wife jokes that a patented toothpick is only useful if it *prevents* public use—mocking both the absurdity of trivial patents and poor public manners. **Other items**: Brief jokes about strikes in New York and a nursery-rhyme parody about a lady named "Hupboard." The page reflects late 19th-century American social anxieties: domestic labor, sectarian conflict, commercialism, and etiquette.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
54 ONLY THE CHILDREN. AM RICANT: I have had considerable experience with children, ma’am, and never have any trouble in mak- ing them like me. MISTRESS: That is very important. Applicant: And I am sure I would get on nicely with your little dog, ma’am. Mistress (stroking the animal): You would have noth- ing to do with Fido, dear little fellow! He is my especial charge. HE man who is not original still has it in his power to make his everlasting quotation-mark. - LIFE: AN EXCELLENT HOME MOTTO. OMAN (7x d00k-store) : 1 want a motto of some kind to hang up in my parlor. CLERK: Yes, madam. How does “ God Bless our Home” strike you? Mapam: Old-fashioned, ain’t it? : CLERK: Itis a trifle old-fashioned. Well, there’s “ Thric is he armed that hath his quarrel just.” RISH Catholics, in this country, it is rumored, will here- after boycott all dealers in oranges, as well as those people who venture to display orange blossoms at weddings. WHAT THE WILD WAVES SAY AT LONG BRANCH, => ———————— A LONG-FELT WANT. USBAND: I see that a Massachusetts genius has secured a patent on a toothpick. Wire: If it is a kind that won't allow itself to be used in public it will fill a long-felt want. as reported by } EW the National Bureau of Statistics, is ahead on strikes—but not those of the ball-field. A CALL TO ARMS. “T° HERE went to a cupboard A lady named Hupboard To look for a bone ; But when she found none It saddened her so that she blupboard. “Father Gander.” ESSIMISM is very handy at subtraction, and is a lightning calculator of minus qualities; but when it attempts exercises in posi- tive addition to knowledge, it goes to the foot of the class. comicbooks.com