The Wasp, 1913 · page 90 of 364
The Wasp — 1913 — page 90: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page appears to be from a serialized narrative fiction rather than a political cartoon. The text describes a dramatic scene involving characters named Burnham, Elizabeth, Smith, and a governor—likely from a serialized adventure story published in *The Wasp*, a San Francisco-based satirical magazine. The passage depicts action-adventure plot mechanics: righteous confrontation, a woman's fainting spell, a wounded hero's physical collapse, and surreal near-death imagery (the "voice of the Last Trump," lying "at the bottom of the sea"). Without seeing illustrations or additional context, it's unclear whether this narrative itself contains satire of political figures or contemporary events. The content reads as melodramatic serialized fiction typical of late 19th/early 20th-century magazines, but whether the characters or situations parody real public figures remains indeterminable from this text alone.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
THE WASP 87 What with righteous indignation and breathless- ness, the governor was on the point of strangula- tion, and Elizabeth had subsided in a swoon imme- diately after her escape from Smith’s infuriated embrace. During the short journey to Government House, Burnham reeled at the governor’s elbow. Though his brain whirled and his stomach quaked with fa- tigue and loss of blood, he was more than satisfied with the trend of the day’s adventures. But, in spite of his contentment of mind and his amazing physical endurance, he fell unconscious within a few yards of the governor’s door. Burnham heard a voice, vast, vague, impersonal, yet insistent. It seemed to come to him through rolling fogs, from limitless voids of space. For ages he listened to it, mildly interested, unable and unanxious to detect any spoken word in it. He re- flected, without apprehension or pleasure, that it was probably the voice of the Last Trump. Doubtless it was because he lay at the bottom of the sea that the voice came to him in so vague and Comichooks.com