The Wasp, 1913 · page 322 of 364
The Wasp — 1913 — page 322: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This appears to be a narrative passage from a serialized story in *The Wasp* magazine, rather than a cartoon. The text describes a dramatic scene involving characters named Stanton, Burnham, and a woman named Kitty in a decrepit tenement building. The passage depicts Burnham following Stanton into a shabby, poverty-stricken dwelling and discovering a woman sobbing behind a door. Burnham then deliberately adopts a drunken disguise to enter the room and observe the scene. The narrative suggests a plot involving deception and surveillance of an intimate moment, possibly implying infidelity or seduction. Without additional context about *The Wasp's* editorial stance or the full story, the specific satirical target remains unclear, though the emphasis on urban poverty and moral transgression suggests social commentary typical of Gilded Age satirical magazines.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
THE WASP 315 } ney ended. Stanton entered a black doorway. Burnham heard him stagger heavily up a shaking staircase and beat upon a quaking door. The por- tal opened, a woman cried out faintly and fear- fully, and the door was shut with a bang. James hesitated for a moment, then entered the house and went noiselessly and cautiously up the decrepit stairs. The damp air of the place smelled of mildew and poverty, rags and misery. With his widespread hands Burnham felt the broken stair- rail on one side and the broken plaster of the wall on the other. He saw a thread of light under the door on the first landing. He stood listening to the sound of half-suppressed sobs from the other side of the door; then, swiftly assuming the gait and facial expression of extreme alcoholic intoxication, he pushed open the door and staggered across the threshold. He halted just within the room, swaying on his feet and surveying the depressing and dramatic scene with a drunken leer. The woman who sobbed was Kitty—put not the blooming Kitty that he had known of old in Lon- COmicooks.com