Life — July 28, 1921 — page 12: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# Life Magazine Cartoon Analysis The main cartoon depicts a police officer at a window arresting two young people, saying: "You are charged with stealing the complainant's watch!" One responds: "I only wanted the time, your Honor." "Ninety days! That's the time." This is a joke about judicial harshness and semantic wordplay. The arrested youth's claim—that they only wanted to know the time, not steal the watch—is technically true but obviously disingenuous. The humor lies in the judge's sardonic response: by sentencing them to "ninety days," he's literally giving them "the time" they claimed to want, while punishing their obvious theft with prison time. It satirizes both petty criminals' thin excuses and the rigid application of justice.