The Wasp — 1877 — page 221: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This is a sequential comic strip depicting a young man's misadventure with new clothes. The narrative follows a boy who is "ragged" and wears old clothes, then obtains a new suit. His attempts to keep it clean fail spectacularly—he gets the suit wet fishing, then gets tarred and pitched while sitting. In subsequent panels, he tries bathing the suit, but it shrinks in a tub. The suit ends up packed in sugar, misplaced in a barrel, and ultimately torn apart by dogs. Finally, the old man gives up, and the boy returns to his original ragged state. The satire likely mocks either parental attempts at respectability for poor children or satirizes the futility of maintaining appearances amid poverty. The relentless destruction of each new suit emphasizes the incompatibility between childhood behavior and genteel dress.