Life, 1927-06-09 · page 12 of 39
Life — June 9, 1927 — page 12: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This illustration depicts a street scene from the 1890s showing a horse being auctioned or displayed for sale. The caption references "old Happenschleiber, the harness man," who is putting a fly net on the horse's "dummy dobbin" (a dated term for horse). The cartoon satirizes the commercial world of late-19th-century urban life, specifically the horse trade and street commerce. The gathered onlookers in period dress suggest this was a notable or amusing public spectacle. The title "The Gay Nineties" indicates this is nostalgic commentary on that era's character—likely poking fun at both the period's business practices and its quaint street activities that would soon become obsolete with automobile adoption. The humor appears to rest on depicting routine commercial activity as entertaining spectacle.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
ING OF THE SUMMER SRASON WAS MAN, PUT THR FLY NET ON HIS DUMMY DORKIN. Letters of a Modern Father M Y pear Son: Your decision to spend one more summer at tennis before set- tling down is satisfactory to me, pro- vided you give me your word to put on your hat on September fifteenth and keep it on. Your mother and 1 are sorry that at the end of your college course we cannot let you go on and take your master’s degree and collect early editions, But with one son an Army officer and a daugh- ter marricd to a portrait painter, we are under the necessity of retrench- ing all the time. I know that most boys your age get to spend a year drinking in Paris after leaving school, but I'm afraid you will have to be contented with loafing at home and criticizing ‘Tilden and Richards. In the fall you must go to work. You have always said you'd like to be an interior decorator, so I have 2 position for you as superintendent of the paste department for the local wall paper company. It is a mighty good place to start for a bey who wants to get up the ladder, Your Arrretionate Farin. McCready Huston. Admonition OTHER (to daughter starting out for a party): And remem- ber, dear, no lady ever cools her gin by blowing on it. . Puzzle A MOVING van, twenty-five feet long, ‘fifteen feet wide and twelve feet high, loaded to cap with furniture, backs Little bungalow approximately twenty feet long, twelve feet wide and ten feet high, After. several minutes’ strenuous activity, the furni- lure is transferred from the van to the house. Disinterested persons passing by will uphold the assertion of the truck driver and his helpers that the van away empty. Problem: Whe¥e did the furniture go? Bill Sykes. Bruce Barton might the line nobody toes. UTY, call comicbooks.com \ Ta bos: tot all I da, firs mu to | ( Yor