The Wasp — 1895 — page 537: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This three-panel comic satirizes the power of music to control behavior. Panel 1 shows a woman at a piano refusing to perform ("I cannot sing you know"). Panel 2 depicts "Persuasion" working—she begins singing "Sweet Bird" as the audience sits attentively. Panel 3 shows the ultimate result: "Everything must have an end"—the audience has literally collapsed or fallen over, apparently overwhelmed or exhausted by her performance. The satire mocks both amateur female musicians (a common social fixture of the era) and the notion that mediocre performances possess magical persuasive power. The title references the proverb "Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast," but here music instead induces collapse rather than soothing—a humorous inversion of the expected civilizing effect.