Life, 1894-08-09 · page 3 of 14
Life — August 9, 1894 — page 3: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Analysis of LIFE Magazine Page (Volume XXIV, Number 606) This page contains three separate humorous pieces: 1. **"A Great Preponderance"** (left): A dialogue between Tom DeWitt, Kitty Winslow, and others debating why so many girls were born in 1875. The joke relies on contemporary awareness of actual birth statistics, though the specific reason for the demographic anomaly is unclear from this excerpt. 2. **"An Unsophisticated Tramp"** (top left): A cartoon depicting a vagrant requesting old pants from a doctor's house—a straightforward joke about poverty and social class. 3. **"A Dangerous Metamorphosis"** (right): A poem by Ernest Graham Devey about a woman receiving a simple kiss that potentially transforms her into "a Mrs."—satirizing anxieties about marriage and female propriety in the Victorian/Edwardian era.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
NUMBER 606. AN UNSOPHISTICATED TRAMP MADE A PAIR OF THE DOCTOR'S OLD PANTS. REQUEST AT OUR DOCTOR'S HOU: But, THEN, HE HAD NEVER SEED PLAIN ENGLISH, A GREAT PREPONDERANCE. OM DEWITT: 1875 must have been a great year for girls. Kirty WiNsLow: I don't see — Tom DeWrtTT: Oh, I was merely wonder- ing how it happened so many more girls were born that year than any other. Kirry WINSLOW: How do you know there were? mM DeWitt: Why, every girl I have met this summer has been just nineteen. R. DELAWANNA: You know we don’t have dinner till three on Sundays, in order to give the girls time to go to church. Mr. MuRRAY HILL: Great Scott! Why didn’t you tell me that at breakfast. ¥ THE pocTor. A DANGEROUS METAMORPHOSIS. HE, ’ IS but a little thing I ask ; A trifle, nothing more, I swear. ‘Tis not a heavy, gruesome task That wrinkles brow or silvers hair ; "Tis something, dear, that if you give, You cannot fairly deem amiss ; ‘Tis nothing more than, as I live, A little, simple, single kiss. SHE, This little thing you boldly ask ; This trifle light, to you, as air, Perhaps, to me, doth fears unmask That well may cause me to beware. For this same simple, single kiss Might soon develop into k And I, from having been amiss, Become, in consequence, a Mrs. Ernest Graham Dewey.