Life — June 11, 1896 — page 19: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This page appears to be a single large cartoon, rotated 90 degrees, depicting a crowded urban street scene—likely New York City based on the OCR text reference to "New Yorkers." The caption's joke critiques New Yorkers who travel to mountains for climbing while ignoring the "dizziest altitudes" available in their own city. The cartoon illustrates this by showing a chaotic, vertically-packed street scene with people stacked and crammed at multiple levels—suggesting skyscrapers and urban density create their own vertiginous heights and chaos. The satire mocks both the impracticality of seeking mountain adventures when living in a visually disorienting urban environment, and implicitly the frenetic, overcrowded nature of city life itself. The dense, cluttered composition reinforces the joke visually.