The Wasp — 1891 — page 127: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This satirical instructional page offers tongue-in-cheek advice through six comic panels. The humor targets social pretension and class anxiety among young men: Panel 1 advises always admiring your future mother-in-law's portrait. Panel 2 warns against mentioning your landlady's chickens at dinner. Panel 3 mocks wearing loud clothes that invite arrest. Panel 4 satirizes accepting lunch invitations from wealthy acquaintances, only to be asked to pay. Panel 5 shows enjoying "a pure Havana" (cigar) when your employer generously offers one. Panel 6 jokes about meeting a girl on the street—taking her to the opera transforms innocent conduct into scandal. The cartoons mock young men's social climbing and their vulnerability to embarrassment and financial exploitation through pretense and miscalculation. The satire emphasizes how easily respectability can be lost through poor judgment.