I Wonder What Those Two Can See in Each Other

Charles Dana Gibson's pen-and-ink plate presents two couples in a public park, contrasted for comic effect. At left, a lanky young man in loud plaid knickerbockers and a flat cap walks arm-in-arm with a slender, bobbed-hair flapper in a striped dress—each oblivious to how absurd their mismatched heights and fashions appear together. At right, a stout, overdressed older woman in a busy checked coat leans toward a slight, dapper gentleman, her umbrella dangling, his expression pained. A small terrier accompanies each pair; a couple sits on a bench behind them, indifferent. The joke—mutual incomprehension of others' romantic choices—is gentle class comedy rather than ethnic caricature, typical of Gibson's later *Life* work, where satirical bite softened into affectionate observation of middle-class social foibles.