Life, 1888-06-28 · page 14 of 21
Life — June 28, 1888 — page 14: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains multiple short satirical pieces typical of Life magazine's format. The main items mock contemporary social figures and issues: **Top section**: A conversation joke where a woman caught entering a hair salon deflects by praising the weather and dismissing her acquaintance—satirizing social pretense and evasion. **"Reflections" section**: Sharp one-liners on current topics, including a pun about executions by electricity being called "elected," and commentary on popular novelists (Howells, Henry James, and Stimson) suggesting established writers are finally trying to please readers rather than challenge them. **Right-side cartoon**: "His Fitful Slumber" and "The Bully Noise"—appears to show someone attempting to use a large barrel or log as a bed or hiding place, with crude humor about creating noise. The reference to "Billy" and "bully" suggests rough, masculine roughhousing. The page exemplifies Life's approach: brief, witty social commentary targeting manners, literary taste, and public figures' hypocrisies.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
> AGE B : BLEST ARE THE TIES THAT BIND. ~ actor may not know much about cravats, but his experience with ties—both railway and matrimonial—is usually extensive. CHANGING THE SUBJECT. NOBLEY: I saw you on Fourteenth Street a few minutes ago, Miss Ethel. SHE: Oh, did you? KNOBLEY: Yes; you were going into a hair store. SHE: Ah, yes; I was executing a little commission for a friend, Beautiful weather we are having, Mr. Knobley. And she beckoned haughtily to her coachman. SEASIDE WAITER—The man who comes down an hour too soon for the boat. REFLECTIONS. O meet the demand for a new verb to fit the new legal method of capital punishment it is suggested that criminals executed by electricity shall be said to be “ elected.” Would that do? ~ * * * A’ Evening Post critic, who calls Mr. Stimson’s “First Harvests” “the most notable novel now running,” gives that story praise which seems the higher when we consider that among other serials now current is one by Mr. Howells and several by Mr. James in which those notorious writers give real indication of a purpose to be agreeable to their readers. Mr. James seems to have had a change of hearts, and there are real symptoms in Mr. Howells’s latest that he has thrown away his microscope and put his eyeglasses on again. * * * HE Star's “Bab” declines to trust a woman who does not care for men’s society. It is gratifying to see Bab sticking up for his sex. * * * HIRLEY DARE bids us “beware above all things of the woman with the upper lip that scarcely moves in speaking.” A stiff upper lip in Miss Dare’s opinion betokens the stiff upper hand. * * * ALE'’S faculty has prohibited the use of exhilarating beverages in any of the secret societies of the college. Speculation is rife as to whether it prohibited secrecy at the same time. Yale’s faculty seems to comprise a wonderfully sanguine body of young men. * * * USTICE has a leaden foot, but it is reported, on good authority, that Jay Gould’s son Eddie is purely and simply a dude. * * * R. PAXTON, whose church Mr. Jay Gould frequents, said to a reporter who asked him if Mr. Gould was a Christian: . Mr. Gould is not a member of any church, and therefore is not an avowed Christian. He is a quiet, reticent gentleman, who would be apt to keep his religious experiences largely to himself in any event. It seems as if Dr. Paxton might be described as a reticent gentleman, whose humor was delightfully dry and used with admirable discretion. HIS FITFUL SLUMBER. “IT'LL MAKE A BULLY NOISE IN HERE, BILLy.” THE BULLY NOISE. comicbooks.com