Life, 1893-01-05 · page 32 of 60
Life — January 5, 1893 — page 32: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains multiple comic sketches by A.B. Wenzell satirizing domestic life and social pretension. The top dialogue joke mocks the absurdity of household priorities: Jack Benedict is willing to move his entire family simply because their cook finds the old house "too far" to reach church—suggesting servants' convenience outweighs family attachment to home. The lower section presents comic definitions and exchanges. One defines an orphan, while another features a couple where the wife notices something odd on her husband's neck. His embarrassed explanation—that it happened "while rehearsing with the quartet"—implies an inappropriate encounter, likely a hickey or love bite, creating humor through the gap between his respectable appearance and questionable behavior. These sketches collectively mock middle-class pretension, the inversion of proper domestic hierarchies (servants dictating family decisions), and hypocrisy in "respectable" society.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
A. B. WENZELL. THE HEAD OF THE HOUSE. ACK BACHELOR: I I thought your family liked your old house very much. We do; you're going to move, old man. Jack BENEDICT: go to church. but it’s too far for the cook to VERY MUCH SO. What is an orphan ? ve and a day): An orphan is a child born without any father or mother, ‘FOR GRACIOUS SAKES, THOMAS, WHAT HAVE YoU GoT ON THY BACK OF YOUR NECK ?" “TL pox'r KNOW, MARIE; IT STRUCK ME LAST NIGHT WHILE REMEARSING WITH THE QUARTET, AND I HAVES ver" comicbooks.com