Life, 1894-01-18 · page 13 of 16
Life — January 18, 1894 — page 13: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
The main cartoon depicts a social situation where a young man ("Arthur") is romantically entangled with a "Boston girl"—the joke being that he needs his overcoat because she's so cold and emotionally distant, not because of weather. Below are brief satirical vignettes mocking upper-class New York life, tracing a man's fortunes through social climbing: he acquires fashionable trappings (opera, clubs, expensive clothes, Fifth Avenue tastes) during good economic times, then loses everything when "the market smashed" and banks fail, reducing him to poverty and damp towels. The smaller jokes mock social pretension: "Innocent Sarcasm" shows a wealthy self-made man uncomfortable when a boy correctly identifies his poor table manners; "Well Disguised" jokes that an actor named Leander Chumpleigh doesn't look or act like an actor—implying he's a con artist or fraud. The satire targets nouveau-riche materialism and the fragility of status-seeking in an economically volatile era.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
A COLD CORNER. “ARTHUR IS WRAPPED UP IN THAT BOSTON GIRL." “Is HE? I HOPE HE HAS HIS OVERCOAT ON.” Name in paper. Flat in New York. Occasional opera. Birdie has solitaires and sealskin sacque. Club. Whist. Won't go home till morning. Birdie in tears and old wrapper. vi. Big business. Long of everything. Market booming. Champagne cocktails. Coupé. Tailor bills and Fifth Ave- nue confections. Wish could speak French. Hambletonian mares, Small house off the avenue. Vil. Market smashed. Banks timid. regrets to Stock Exchange. Tradesmen bitter creditors, in insurance office. cents quart. Calls for margins. Sent Room traders good fellows, No bowels. Auction. Situation $1,200, Coat shiny. Plain gin. 75 Vil. House in Gowanus. Old friends near-sighted. Birdie Bar Harbor, weighs 210, Four girls. Beard grizaling. Turkey in paper bag Thanksgiving. Hard lines. Pipe better than cigars, anyhow. Damp towel on plug Sundays, Eldest girl engaged to corner grocer's boy. Boy says old man prosy. Curtain, Used to be high flyer. INNOCENT SARCASM. ITTLE WILLIE: 1! wish I was you, Mr. Selfmade. MR. SELFMADE (who has come to dinner); And why, Willie? WILLI ‘Cause you don’t get your ears pulled for cating with your knife. WELL DISGUISED. HE: Leander Chumpleigh doesn’t look like an actor, does he? HE: No; and he doesn’t act like one either.