The Wasp — 1895 — page 262: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This page is primarily **advertising**, not political satire. The central cartoon depicts four cranes in various entangled positions with the caption "The Foolish Cranes: They Fought Over a Worm and Became Badly Entangled." This appears to be a **fable illustration**—likely Aesop's tale warning against greed and conflict. The cranes fighting over a single worm become so tangled they harm themselves, teaching that quarreling over scarce resources produces mutual ruin. The surrounding advertisements (Epps's Cocoa, Damiana Bitters, various medical remedies) are unrelated to the cartoon's moral lesson. The page mixes editorial content with commercial promotions typical of late-19th-century magazines.