Life, 1890-11-13 · page 8 of 20
Life — November 13, 1890 — page 8: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Analysis of Life Magazine Page 270 **Top Cartoon:** "Fox-Hunting in New Jersey" depicts wealthy gentlemen in top hats engaging in fox-hunting near water, satirizing the pretensions of the leisure class adopting European aristocratic pastimes. **Bottom Cartoon & Dialogue:** Titled "Not as Black as He's Painted," this piece satirizes circular debt and financial confusion. Two men (Travers and Cleverton) argue about who owes whom money through a convoluted chain involving a third party named Dashaway. The joke illustrates how financial entanglements can become so twisted that settling debts becomes logically impossible. The caricatured figure between them appears to represent the complications themselves—a visual representation of financial absurdity common in Gilded Age satire.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
FOX-HUNTING IN NEW JERSEY. A FIVE DOLLAR TRANSACTION. “RAVERS: You area nice friend to have. Yesterday, when I had sworn to pay Dashaway a debt of honor to the amount of $5, and sent around to your office explaining the whole matter, you paid not the slightest attention to my request for a loan, ron: Hold on. When you asked Dashaway first for that y he came around and borrowed it from me. So yesterday I really paid you $5 although, of course, you didn’t know it at the time. Then I had you pay Dashaway. Then I had Dashaway pay me. That canceled his debt and yours, Do you see ? TRAVERS: Of course. And that makes us square. CLEVERTON: Not much you owe me $5. TRAVERS: Not at all. Towed Dashaway $5, and he owed you $5, Now | paid him by your own confession the $5 | owed him, and through him I paid you the $5 that he owed you, That makes a total of $10, $5 of this, however, belonged to Dashaway. The other $3 1 paid you, but as you had already lent me $5, this made us square. CLEVERTON: No, no, You owed Dashaw 5. didn't you? Well, I paid him. So now you owe it to me. What could possibly be plainer > TRAVERS: Well, we'll see about that. Here comes Dashaway. Say, ROAR. Dashaway did this man pay you the $5 I owed you yesterday? Dasttaway: No I should say not. 1 have just been looking for “NOT AS BLACK AS HE'S PAINTED,” you. comicbooks.com