Life, 1893-03-30 · page 8 of 28
Life — March 30, 1893 — page 8: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Life Magazine Page 202: Social Commentary This page contains a satirical dialogue between **Mr. Goldstein** (a cigar merchant) and a customer identified as "The Victim." The joke satirizes consumer deception: the victim complains that cigars he bought from Goldstein were so poor quality they broke in his pocket. Goldstein dismissively responds that a gentleman told him his cigars were "the toughest in the whole lowery [sic]"—a deliberate misunderstanding playing on "lowery" (lower-class neighborhood) versus quality assurance. Below is an unrelated section titled "His Remarkable Experience" about Adam in Eden, appearing to be literary content rather than satire. The cartoon mocks both dishonest merchant practices and the verbal sleight-of-hand used to defend them, typical of early 20th-century American humor targeting urban commerce and ethnic stereotypes.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
bounded up, impelled by flight, as if a hundred furies had entered his brain to swarm there and sting, and tear, and rasp, and buzz. He threw back his head in the endeavor to rid himself of the hor- rible incubus. It was in vain. His eyes distended, his very hair stood on end for fright. His nostrils dilated, and the air grew dark and thick about him, as he lost the power of breath. What did it mean? He could nottell. Vague rumors had reached him concerning the mystery called death, Was this it? Was he going to explode ? No, not that. I may as well end this suspense right here :—the bounding, buzzing came to an end in one grand tittilation. He ex- claimed, ‘‘Ker-choo, ker-choo,”” and the experience was over. It was Adam’s first sneeze. } R. GOLDSTEIN: Come in my freint and puy some Havana cigars at half price. THE Victim: No,sir. I bought some of you the other day, and I did not like them. They were sodry and brittle, that they broke to pieces when I put them in my pocket. Mr. GOLDSTEIN: Dry and brittle. Mine Gott! a shentleman told me to-day that my cigars were the toughest in the whole Bowery. HE woman of limited means who is always well dressed either devotes her entire income or her entire intellect to her clothes. CURIOUS WOMAN — One who is not. Winterbloom: DON'T YOU THINK $200 1S RATHER HIGH FOR A TAILOR-MADE GOWN ? Von BLUMER TELLS ME HIS WIFE PAID ONLY $150 FOR HERS, Mrs. Winterbloom ; TRUE, MY DEAR, BUT SHE GOT HERS BEFORE I GOT MINE. HIS REMARKABLE EXPERIENCE. DAM was alone in the garden of Eden in the cool of the day—a day well spent— partly in exercise not in the least exhausting, and the balance in sedentary pas- times not at allenervating. He was feeling socomfortable without and so complacent within, that the blow, when it fell, was all the more stunning. A sudden feeling came over him—a strange, uncanny, mysterious feeling—a sense ofan inward chasm yawning in his very thoughts, a sensation as if all sense had A BEER MUG. comicbooks.com