Life — June 9, 1921 — page 18: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This is a satirical cartoon from *Life* magazine titled "The After-Dinner Speaker Who D[oes]..." (text cut off). It depicts three formally dressed people at what appears to be an elegant dinner, with food and drinks scattered on the table. The humor targets a recognizable social type: the after-dinner speaker at formal events. The cartoon likely satirizes speakers who are verbose, pompous, or otherwise problematic during post-meal speeches—a common fixture of upscale social gatherings in the early 20th century. The exaggerated formal attire and the presence of the tall, gesturing speaker on the right suggests he's the main subject of ridicule. The specific criticism isn't fully legible in the OCR'd text, but the cartoon mocks the pretension or tedium of formal dinner speeches, a social ritual that was more prominent then than today.