Life, 1892-11-24 · page 13 of 22
Life — November 24, 1892 — page 13: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains four separate humor pieces typical of early 20th-century satirical magazines: 1. **Top cartoon**: A social scene satirizing vanity. A visitor claims youth (implying age twenty), but an "innocent boy" cynically suggests no one would believe it—mocking both false claims about appearance and gullibility. 2. **"Practice and Preaching"**: Ironic commentary on hypocrisy. A man wrote instructional books on romance but fainted attempting to propose—the gap between theory and practice. 3. **Irish dialect jokes**: Two brief exchanges featuring Irish characters ("Donovan," "begorra") discussing health problems, likely relying on period stereotypes for humor. 4. **"A Fair Business Risk"**: Dark humor about a Jewish father (Coney Cohen) dismayed that his son guaranteed a coat to a dying man—the son accepted certain death as payment guarantee. 5. **Romance exchanges**: Quick witty rejections—a woman dismisses a poor man's marriage proposal as forgetting his place; another mocks "blue stockings" (educated women) as impractical. These reflect Victorian-era attitudes toward class, gender, ethnicity, and courtship conventions that modern readers would find dated or offensive.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Visiter: NO ONE WOULD DREAM THAT | WAS BUT TWENTY UNLEss ] TOLD THEM, The Innocent Boy: NO, AND A GREAT MANY WOULD NOT BELIEVE IT THEN. PRACTICE AND PREACHING. **T)ID yez say yer health is bad, Mr. Donovan?” “Yis. Oi've bin walkin’ in me slape.” “Och, begorra, if Oi cu'd only have done that same, Oi wouldn't be off the force now.” E'D writ a book on how to love. With points on what to say. But when he tried to pop one night, He fainted dead away. USBAND (to wife from Boston): You never find any blue stockings in the Prince of Wales's set. WIFE (strong minded): No; blue is not a fast color. A FAIR BUSINESS RISK. OONEY COHEN: Mein sohn, vhy did you guarantee ——_—_— dot over-coad to lasd Mr. Nixy as long as he lives. E: I love you; will you marry me? YouNG COHEN: Fader, he has heart disease—he dies any SHE (haughtily): You forget yourself, sir. minute ! He: I have to; I’m poor, comicbooks.com