Life, 1887-09-29 · page 7 of 16
Life — September 29, 1887 — page 7: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Analysis of Life Magazine Page 175 The illustration depicts a street scene with three figures observing what appears to be a hat flying through the air. The dialogue below reveals the joke's context: someone lost their hat when it was knocked out of a car window, threw it back onto a train, and then jumped off after it. This is a visual gag about absurd, escalating consequences—a slapstick humor format typical of early 20th-century comic illustration. The joke relies on the increasingly ridiculous actions of someone determined to retrieve a lost hat, treating a trivial item as worthy of physically dangerous pursuit. The "Literary Notes" and "Scraps" sections contain period observations about American literature and social commentary, but the main cartoon is primarily comedic rather than satirical.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
- LIFE: LITERARY NOTES. R. HAGGARD will find it hard to refute the latest proof of plagiarism. _It has been discovered that no less a person than’ William Makepeace Thackeray used a stub pen long before Mr. Haggard wrote Allan Quatermain, in the construction of which the broad nib largely figured. : . . . R, WILLIAM J. ROLFE is soon to give us another of the little quartos which are so satisfactory and scholarly, in an annotated edition of “ The Minor Poems of Milton.” This is very nice, but what we want is a pinto edition of “ Paradise Lost” for the pocket. We trust Mr. Rolfe will prove indulgent and give us what we ask. . . . HE realists cannot claim Mr. Lang as one of their number. He writes in the Forum on the manners of critics, when it is a well-established fact that critics have none. SCRAPS. ILLING unclaimed dogs by electricity is justly described as a shocking process. . . MERICAN influence is extending in England. Even the British war ves- sels now have to imitate the American navy by indulging in collisions. . . . DWARD HANLAN, the oarsman, is said to have been trained by his young wife. He is not the first bridegroom who has had this experience. . . . OSTON’S new club of Unitarians, named after the most famous divine of their church, will have a chance to show what are the precise relations of Channing and chinning. . . . HE reason why truth is stranger than fiction is that it is much rarer. . . . OVERNOR MARTIN, of Kansas, de- clares that the blessing of prohibition is unmixed. We infer from this that the Kansas people take their water straight. 175 A LIFE of Charles Sumner is now running in the Cos- mopolitan, It will doubtless follow in the wake of the Life of Lincoln, taking a census of the people overlooked by Messrs. Hay & Nicolay. NEW BooKs - BY THE WAY. Ao Idlers Diary, Ry F. F. Boston: Clarke & Carruth. The Princess Reubine. A Russian Love Story. By Henry Gréville. Philadelphia: T, B. Peterson & Brothers. The Village Mystery: or, The Spectre of St. Arlyle. By Dr. Benjamin F. Mason. Part First. New Vork: FD. Wired laa Battles and Leaders ofthe Civil War. No.3. New York : The Century Co- Romantic Love and Personal Beauty. Their Development, Causal Relations, Historic and National Peculiarities. By Henry T. Finck. Lon- doa: Macmillan & Co. When I was a Boy in China, By Yan Phoa Lee. Boston: D. Lothrop Co, The Ree-Man of Orn, and Other Fanciful Tales. By Frank R. Stockton, New York : Charles Scribner's Sons. An Operetta in Profile. By Czeika, Boston: Ticknor & Co. The Checkered Carcer of Timothy Tangle, Etg. By Edward I. Darling. New York: Frank F, Lovell & Co. The John Spicer Lectures, Boston : D. Lothrop & Co. HE man who first introduced ice-cream into Maryland has gone to his reward, at the age of seventy. It is doubtful whether cream will freeze in the temperature of that other clime. “Say, DID YOU SEE A HAT THAT WAS KNOCKED OUT OF THE CAR WINDOW?” “Yes, | THREW IT BACK ON THE TRAIN.” “Great Scorr! I've JUST JUMPED OFF AFTER IT." comicbooks.com