The Wasp — 1887 — page 401: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This page is predominantly **advertising and directory listings** for San Francisco-area hotels, boarding houses, and businesses, with a small fictional story titled "African Courtship" at the top left. The story depicts a racist dialect narrative about an enslaved or formerly enslaved man named "Old Alf" Peters visiting a plantation. It employs offensive period stereotypes in portraiture and phonetic speech patterns common to 19th-century American racial satire. The dialogue centers on courtship and domestic situations rendered through dehumanizing caricature. The bulk of the page comprises hotel advertisements, wholesale grocery listings (DeWitt & Harris), and a prominent medical advertisement for "Weak Men and Women" treatments. **This is a historical artifact reflecting deeply racist editorial standards of its era.** The content demonstrates how such stereotypes were normalized in mainstream American publications.