Life — October 27, 1921 — page 4: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# Window Silliness by Beatrice Herford This is a humorous sketch set in a Pullman railroad car, satirizing the absurdity of train travel etiquette. A young woman traveling on the "Gray Gables" complains to the conductor about her lost ticket, which she claims she placed on the window sill. The conductor dismissively suggests she look in her bag, but she insists she examined everything—chocolates, hair-curlers, theater checks, etc. The joke plays on the impracticality of using a window sill to store important documents while traveling, and the resulting bureaucratic frustration when the ticket vanishes. The accompanying illustrations show the conductor and porter becoming increasingly exasperated as they try to resolve this self-inflicted problem, mocking passenger carelessness and railway procedures of the era.