Life — December 28, 1893 — page 40: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This appears to be a social satire cartoon from *Life* magazine depicting a bachelor entertaining female guests at dinner. The sketch shows several elegantly dressed women in early 20th-century attire gathered around a dining table with empty chairs in the foreground. The incomplete caption—"He tries to speak and his lips rise to sa[y]"—suggests the humor involves a bachelor's awkward attempts at conversation or courtship with his female guests. The cartoon satirizes the social awkwardness of unmarried men hosting formal dinner parties, a common theme in period humor about bachelor life and gender relations. The specific joke likely plays on his nervousness or inability to impress the women present, mocking genteel social conventions of the era.