The Wasp — 1889 — page 68: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This page contains several satirical anecdotes and one illustration rather than a single cohesive political cartoon. The main illustrated story, "No Peace But Peas," depicts what appears to be a rural couple on a train. The satire concerns a farmer's wife's rigid moral objection to tobacco chewing—she insists "no man who chews tobacco can go to heaven." Her husband humorously counters by noting that heaven is "a clean place," so even tobacco chewers might enter. The joke mocks rigid religious moralism and domestic disagreements. Other brief stories mock legal absurdities (a woman's divorce petition, a judge's ruling about steers) and document humorous incidents from train travel and everyday life. The content reflects late-19th-century American rural life, religious attitudes, and social tensions rendered as comedic anecdotes rather than pointed political satire.