The Wasp — 1889 — page 300: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This page contains three separate short stories/articles rather than political cartoons. The main illustration shows a ragged man sitting in a chair, captioned "Repenting at Leisure." The accompanying story "A Tale of a Tourist" humorously describes a beggar soliciting charity from a well-dressed woman and her vegetarian husband who refuses to help. The satire appears to target hypocrisy—the man's moral superiority about not eating meat contrasts with his indifference to human suffering. The other stories include "An Awful Crisis Averted" (domestic marital humor) and "At the Hod-Carriers' Banquet" (working-class social commentary with Irish dialect characters). The page's satire targets class pretension, vegetarian ethics, and marriage dynamics rather than specific political figures or events.