Life, 1896-02-20 · page 5 of 20
Life — February 20, 1896 — page 5: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# "An Anxious Customer" Cartoon Analysis This cartoon satirizes a common social anxiety of the era. John Potts seeks a spiritualist medium to reunite him with his estranged wife, offering $100 as payment. The humor derives from treating marital separation as a supernatural problem requiring professional intervention—suggesting the situation is so hopeless that contacting the dead seems a reasonable solution. The joke reflects contemporary skepticism toward spiritualism, a popular but widely mocked practice. By depicting a desperate man willing to pay substantial money for such a service, the cartoon ridicules both spiritualists as charlatans and clients as gullible. The caption emphasizes Potts's comic desperation about his domestic misfortune.
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Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
> LIFE: IN LEAP YEAR. WEETHEART, should propose, I won't be captious quite; I won't turn up my nose, For that would not be right. you I will not blush and say : “* This is so sudden. dear,” I will not turn—nay, nay— To you a drumless car. SSH But, sweetheart, if you showla This year your love confess, I'll promise to be good And meekly answer “Yes.” THE WOLF AND THE SHEEP. FABLES FOR THE TIMES. WOLF that had been left for dead by the dogs lay not far from a running brook, life. Just then a sheep passed near, ‘* Pray, sistei eye-teeth, ‘bring me some water from yon stream. He felt that one good drink might save his id he very gently, but with a sinister twinkle of hi: ‘+ Certainly,” said the sheep, and she brought him a glass in which she - " had poured a few knock-out drops. later she moralized in this manner: but all wicked people are not clever, by a d—d sight.” As she sat on his corpse a little ‘*Some clever people are wicked, H.W. Phillips. AN ANXIOUS CUSTOMER. OHN POTTS: Are you the medium who advertises J to unite the separated ? MEDIUM (proudly): I never fail. Joun Ports: I wish you would connect me with the $100 I got separated from last night. “How MUCH DISCOUNT YOU GIF ME ON HALEF A DozEN, Doctor?” THE THEATRE-GOER’S DREAM. HERE were two women with large hats sitting in front of the Inveterate Theatre- goer, and he had dined exceedingly well. His orchestra chair had not cost him anything, and the play being performed was one of those fashionable imported ones called a SOCIAL PROBLEM DRAMA. The apparent irrelevance of these facts can all be connected into one big reason why he fell asleep in the middle of the second act. And he dreamed. 4) Invhis dream the characters on the stage sud- \ denly assumed perfectly natural attitudes, and +, talked in the ineffective manner of ordinary human beings. The Wicked Fascinating man boyan the conversation. He walked L, and R. from force of habit. He wore an Inverness cape probably from the same reason, and his fingers were cramped into the position which the fingers assume while holding a cigarette. ‘‘T would like a day in the country,” said the Wicked Fascinating man, ‘‘or, anyhow, a day outside a drawing room. Since the British Dramatists started me in life— some years ago—I've lived in perpetual evening dress and in an atmosphere of gas. A white shirt bosom has become obnoxious to me. I've smoked cigarettes until Itaste nothing but nicotine, satirized women until the whole sex satiate me with admiration, and I've beer. comicbooks.com