The Wasp — 1891 — page 255: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This page is primarily **advertisements and business listings** for San Francisco businesses (pianos, furniture, hotels, sewing machines, art galleries), interspersed with one small illustrated joke. The only cartoon present shows a man and boy discussing luxuries. The dialogue satirizes middle-class attitudes: when the boy asks what a luxury is, the father defines it as "something we don't really need," then admits a mosquito net must be a luxury because "we can't do without" it—a absurdist joke playing on the logical contradiction and the discomfort of San Francisco Bay mosquitoes. The page includes one substantial editorial piece titled "Special to the Wasp" criticizing immigration and immigrant populations, characterizing them pejoratively as undesirable, crime-prone, and a drain on communities. This reflects period anti-immigrant sentiment common in American satirical publications.