Life, 1896-10-15 · page 3 of 18
Life — October 15, 1896 — page 3: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# LIFE Magazine, Volume XXVIII, Number 720 This page contains satirical humor about early 20th-century social conventions: **Top cartoon** ("A Leap-Year Episode"): References leap-year tradition where women could propose to men. The dialogue jokes that a father consents to his daughter's marriage proposal simply because "she said she did." **Middle section** ("A Test"): Two gentlemen discuss a woman's beauty, with one noting she looks good even in amateur photographs—backhanded compliment humor about photography's limitations. **Bottom cartoon** ("Doing Two Things at Once"): The text discusses the "Li Hung yellow jacket" becoming fashionable for afternoon teas, satirizing how exotic fashion trends (here, Chinese-inspired clothing) influence social status and class distinctions among the wealthy. The humor relies on period-specific social anxieties about gender roles, photography, and fashion snobbery.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
NUMBER 720 A LEAP-YEAR EPISODE. “WHY DO YOU THINK, YOUNG MAN, THAT MY DAUGHTER WANTS TO MARRY You 2?” “ BECAUSE SHE SAID SUE DID.” A TEST. R. HOJACK: Miss Tenspot must be surpassingly beautifui. Mr. Tompik: Indeed! What makes you think so? “She looks well even in an amateur photograph.” M*’sY a man follows his bent till he goes broke. IT IS NOT IMPOSSIBLE. OW that the ‘Li Hung yellow jacket’? has become the proper and swell thing for afternoon teas, we may shortly expect to see it followed by the baggy trousers and picturesque foot-wear of our sister Orientals; and as it is an established fact that dress has much to do with one’s mentality and bearing, and that these in turn are reflected in the countenance, it follows, therefore, that the “Li Hung face” is a possibility of the future, and that a gamboge complexion and almond eyes may become marks of pedigree and social dis- tinction that will at least date back so far as the memorable summer when the mild-eyed and solicitous Mars of far Cathay sat among us, and from the midst of Waldorfian splendor propounded strange and disquieting queries to pneu- “ DOING TWO THINGS AT ONCE.” matically distended bond-holders and females of infrequent birth-days. comicbooks.com