Life, 1889-01-03 · page 1 of 16
Life — January 3, 1889 — page 1: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# "From Bad to Worse" - Life Magazine, January 3, 1889 This cartoon illustrates a social comedy about courtship and names. A woman tells a man she'd prefer to call him by a different name—suggesting his actual name (Tom) is "hateful and common." When he asks if he's known as "Tom" among friends, she reveals they call him "Shorty" instead, which he finds even more insulting (his "brightening up" is sarcastic). The joke satirizes Victorian courtship rituals and social pretension: the woman rejects his given name as insufficiently refined, but the alternative nickname is actually worse and more unflattering. It captures the absurdity of romantic negotiations where superficial concerns about propriety mask underlying incompatibility or rudeness.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
OLUME XIII. NEW. YORK, JANUARY.3, 1889. | NUMBER 314. Entered at the New York Post Office as Seconid-Cass Mail Matter Copyright, 1888, by Mircnatt & the \ wand / prelicanus SVM. FROM BAD TO WORSE. She: 1 WOULD LIKE TO CALL YOU RY YOUR CHRISTIAN NAME, LOVE, BUT ToM IS ) HATEFUL AND COMMON, YOU KNOW, HAVEN'T YOU SOME PET NAME? He: N-No, I—-ER—HAVEN'T, . She: ARE YOU ALWAYS KNOWN AS TOM AMONG YOUR FRIENDS? e Ue (brightening up): No, THE BOYS CALL ME “SHORTY!” \ comicbooks.com