The Wasp — 1891 — page 381: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This page contains satirical sketches and humorous anecdotes rather than explicit political cartoons. The main illustration shows a brass-faced hotel porter—a stock character type representing hustling, aggressive San Francisco waterfront commerce during what appears to be the Gold Rush or Gilded Age era. The text includes dialogue satirizing: - **Newspaper hustlers** selling papers aggressively to travelers - **Temperance league advocacy** and male resistance to reform - **Medical quackery** (a general satirized doctor's advice) - **Working-class street life** and domestic situations The humor targets pretense, commercialism, and the gap between reformist ideals and actual behavior. A poem at bottom addresses someone named "Jerry Driscoll," suggesting personal or local satire. The overall tone mocks San Francisco's materialism and the conflict between Victorian morality and frontier roughness.