Life, 1893-12-28 · page 7 of 53
Life — December 28, 1893 — page 7: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Analysis of Life Magazine Page (Volume XXII, Number 574) This page contains three separate satirical pieces typical of Life's humor: 1. **"Extenuating"** (top illustration): Shows a woman confronting a man, captioned with dialogue about "hating Jack" before he proposed. The joke plays on romantic reconciliation—she's explaining away her prior negative feelings. 2. **"Inconsistency in High Places"**: A dialogue satirizing wealthy Fifth Avenue residents' hypocrisy. They refuse to give money to servants yet demand free baths and lectures about morality while being unreasonable themselves. 3. **"A Saving Clause"** and **"A Comparison"**: Brief jokes about a husband who gambles but is kind to animals, and a mathematical piece about train speeds and messenger boys. These represent typical early-20th-century American satirical humor targeting class contradictions and social absurdities.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
VOLUME XxXIl. EXTENUATING. “WHY, YOU TOLD ME YOU HATED Jack 1” “OH, THAT WAS BEFORE HE PROPOSED.” NUMBER $74. TO AIMEE A SONNET to my £ lady fair I'd write ; Yet when I view her golden hair So bright, Her laughing eye so blue, Her cheek of rosy hue, ‘The lover overpowers the bard In me, I cannot rhyme, though I try hard, While she Unconscious quite of every trick, Plays havoc with my rhetoric, Ah, me! A COMPARISON. eg RAILWAY train traveling night and day at the rate of fifty miles an hour would reach Alpha Centauri, the nearest of the fixed forty-two mill- “H'm! About the * same time that it would take the average mes- senger boy to cross the city twice if he had no bad luck.” INCONSISTENCY IN HIGH PLACES. TRAMP: These Fifth Avenue people are very unreasonable with us. OND TRAMP: Yes; never give money, and lecture you for being TRAMP: And yet, when I rang and asked for a bath only I was refused. A SAVING CLAUSE, RS. UNSOPHISTICUS: My husband may be a gambler, but he is very kind to dumb animals. Mrs. RIGHTUPTODATE: What makes you think so? Mrs. UNSOPHISTICUS: I overheard him tell the doctor that he sat eight hours in the club fattening up the kitty. A CLOSE CALCULATION, comicbooks.com