Life — June 25, 1896 — page 3: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# Cartoon Analysis This is a two-panel cartoon from *Life* magazine (Volume XXVII, No. 704) showing two men in what appears to be a smoking room or lounge. **First Shade** (left panel): "There's one good thing about this place." **Second Shade** (right panel): "What's that?" **Response**: "We can smoke." The cartoon's humor relies on the term "shades"—a period slang term for ghosts or deceased persons. The joke suggests these are dead men in the afterlife, and their punchline is that one advantage of being dead (in this particular place, presumably Hell) is freedom to smoke without restriction. This satirizes real-world smoking restrictions or social disapproval of smoking that existed at the time, implying smokers would prefer even damnation to living under such constraints.