Life, 1888-12-13 · page 11 of 14
Life — December 13, 1888 — page 11: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# "A Matter of Etiquette" - Life Magazine Cartoon This cartoon satirizes upper-class hypocrisy and social pretension. A wealthy woman encounters a beggar and offers charity—but only on her terms, specified by her calling card for "Thursdays." When she later encounters the same beggar, he explains he didn't call because her card indicated only Thursday visits were acceptable. The joke mocks the woman's conditional "generosity": she frames charity as a formal social engagement with rigid etiquette rules, rather than genuine help. The beggar's respectful adherence to her stated conditions exposes the absurdity—he took her card as a literal appointment, treating her offer like a social visit rather than urgent assistance. The satire targets how wealthy people use social conventions to limit their obligations to the poor, turning charitable impulses into controlled, inconvenient formalities that ultimately serve the giver's convenience, not the recipient's need.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
- LI REFLECTIONS. % UR old friend, the Springfield Repudb/:- can, has been reading Mr. Stevenson's Christmas sermon in Scribner's, and announces that that delightful story- teller “has no essential ‘standard in life, no real faith, and especially no hope.” “* His gospel,” it says— “is summed up in saying that all roads lead to failure, and on the way let us not be inconsistent in conduct, but get along as good-naturedly as may be with what must in any case be a disappointing, dissatisfy- ing, and finally futile existence.” Our pessimistic contemporary from Massachusetts seems to be taking a needlessly hopeless view of Mr. Ste- venson. In considering what he has written about life on Earth, it seems to regard it as spoken of all existence. It is life Aere that Mr. Stevenson finds unsatisfying, and he remarks on the inadequacy of mundane results with- FE: 337 out prejudice to the possibilities of existence after death. Let him speak for himself. He writes: ‘Life is not designed to minister to a man’s vanity... . Full of rewards and pleasures as it is—so that to see the day break or the moon rise, or to meet a friend, or to hear the dinner-call when he is hungry, fills him with. surprising joys—this world is yet for him no abiding city.” Mr. Stevenson is right. Life 2s unsatisfying. It isn't a glittering success even to fools, much less to wise men. Where has our Massachusetts brother been “ stopping ” all these years not to have found that out ? “Though thrice a thousand years are past Since David's son, the sad and splendid, The weary King-Ecclesiast, Upon his awful tablets penned it,” Our contemporary seems to have missed the news of which the familiar headline runs “ Vanitas, vanitatum.” . . . LAS, it has ever been thus with the valued Republican / Speaking very nearly six years ago on a kindred sub- ject, it observed: “Lire is the ambitious title of the newspaper of satire and social observance started in New York. . «LiFe is not smart at all, A MATTER OF ETIQUETTE. Mrs. G—— MET A BEGGAR IN THE STREET, AND WAS MOVED TO HELP HIM, ‘*HERE'S MY CARD," SHE SAID, ‘‘IF YOU'LL CALL AT MY HOUSE, I'LL GIVE YOU SOME CLOTHES.” HE FAILED TO PUT IN AN APPEARANCE; BUT A DAY OR TWO LATER SHE CHANCED TO SEE HIM AGAIN, AND ASKED: “Why DIDN'T You CALL?” “INDADE, MUM, BUT YOUR CARD DO SAY * THURSDAYS!" comicbooks.com