Life, 1893-01-05 · page 28 of 60
Life — January 5, 1893 — page 28: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains two distinct pieces of humor: **"Brought Up with a Round Turn"** (Brennan cartoon): A peddler's awkward encounter with a sharp-tongued housewife. When he asks to see "the lady of the house," she bristles defensively, sarcastically suggesting he might have mistaken her for the gentleman, a neighbor, a farm hand, "the cat, or the ice-chest." The joke satirizes working-class women's sensitivity about their social status—she interprets his polite phrasing as insulting, assuming he doubted her position in her own home. The title suggests she verbally "turned" him around sharply. **"The Traveler's Tale"**: A fat man tells a story about a drummer (traveling salesman) named Homer Balderstone captured by Texas outlaws in 1869. The dark humor lies in the absurd punchline: the outlaws are moved by Homer's singing of "Home, Sweet Home," gather around him emotionally—then kill him anyway because they "could not be expected to stand everything." It mocks both sentimentality and frontier violence.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
PE Po SSE os ae Sie 232 S338 eg eae AN I see the lady of the house ?" inquired the peddler. “Well, yes, you can if you ain’t blind!” snapped the woman who had answered the bell. “Oh, beg pardon, madam; you are the lady of the house, then?” “Yes, 1 am; what d’yer take me for? Did yer think I was the gentleman of the house, or the next-door neighbor, or one of the farm hands, or the cat, or the ice-chest ?” “1 didn’t know, madam, but you might be the youngest daughter." “Oh, did yer? Wel What d’yer want, sir?” I, that was nat’ral, too. ALFRED BRENNAN. “BROUGHT UP WITH A ROUND TURN.” THE TRAVELER’S TALE. SP ALKING about travel- ing in T id the fat man who had pre-empted the easiest. arm-chair nearest the Iking about traveling nobody had men- stove, in Te tioned Texas, but no one had the heart to stop him—* traveling in Texas, it isn’t what it used to be. Of course an occasional train is held up, but a man at least three chances out of five, nowadays, to pass through the state with his purse intact. “ Away ‘k in "69, a friend of mine, Homer Balderstone, a fine, manly young fellow, drum- ming for a New York suspender house, was riding along, just outside of Dallas, when he was captured by a band of outlaws, who, not content with robbing him, bound him to a tree and evidently meant to take his life. “It was a dreadful situation. Homer was only twenty-nine, engaged to be married to a Newark girl, and in a fair way to make a fortune. He felt pretty blue, as you may imagine, and when he saw that the rascals were in earnest he began to pray —at which the outlaws simply laughed. Then Homer began to sing. It was ‘Home, Sweet Home,’ and although Homer was no vocalist, he sang it with all his heart. The outlaws seemed strangely moved at first and then they gathered slowly around him. “Then at the end of the second verse,” continued the fat man, with a deep sigh, “they brained him, The leader, Jean Manuel Banana, or something like that, who was captured shortly afterward, said that even outlaws could not be expected to stand everything.” CONGRATULATORY. W thank LiFe for living. THE MINSTRELS. comicbooks.com