Life, 1890-12-18 · page 7 of 14
Life — December 18, 1890 — page 7: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Analysis of Life Magazine Page 353 This page contains four unrelated satirical pieces typical of Life's humor format: 1. **"The Height of Beauty"**: A joke about a cloak's fashionable length, suggesting women's clothing was absurdly long. 2. **"Up in the World"**: A pun about Dashaway (likely a racehorse) and repeated references to "puff"—satirizing exaggerated claims about accomplishments. 3. **"Too Hasty"**: A brief anecdote mocking Old Bullion's hasty financial decisions, suggesting recklessness in business dealings. 4. **"A Very Bad Habit"**: A dentist joke about extracting teeth and holding "the socket down." The large illustration titled **"Well Meant"** depicts a charitable distribution of poultry to poor women and children, with a caption about Mrs. O'Rourke and "long life to yer honor"—likely satirizing charity as performative or condescending social theater.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
THE HEIGHT OF BEAUTY. JOUNG LADY (én fur store): Do you think this cloak is becoming ? PropRIETOR: Pecoming? My tear young lady, dot cloak make you look so entranzingly peautiful dot if you go a street car in mit dot cloak on, some shentlemans vould gif you a zeat. UP IN THE WORLD. LEVERTON (cstting Dashaway's new room): Look here (puff), how many more flights have we (puff) to climb? This is (puff, puff) getting to be serious. At this rate heaven (puff, puff, puff) can’t be far off. DasHaWay: Heaven! We _ passed that ten minutes ago. “A VERY RAD ILAnIT.” 353 TOO HASTY. 6 T breaks my heart to think of it.” “ What does ?"" “Old Bullion failed and I broke off my match with his daughter.” “Well?” “Tt turns out Bullion had turned over all his property to his wife.” RUSTIC was boasting of a “big job” he had done in having a tooth taken out which had ached “like lightnin’. “What did you have to do about it, so great, except to furnish the tooth?” asked a bystander. “Why, dummit, I hild the socket doown.”” WELL MEANT. Mrs. O'Rourke (to charitable old Mr. Hartwell, who ts giving away poultry to the needy): LONG Lire TO YER WoNoR; SURE TL NIVER SEE A GOOSE AGIN RUT TLL THINK OF VEZ! comicbooks.com