"Can I sit up here beside you, or do you rule alone?" — Frontispiece for Van Bibber and Others

Gibson's frontispiece for Richard Harding Davis's 1892 story collection depicts a domestic tableau of comfortable upper-class New York life: a tall, impeccably dressed man in a frock coat leans attentively toward a small girl seated on an ornate sofa, while a woman kneels at the child's feet, apparently tending to her stocking or shoe. A starburst gas lamp crowns the sofa back; scattered clothing lies on the floor. The composition flatters Davis's hero Van Bibber as a man of easy sentiment beneath his man-about-town polish. No ethnic caricature appears here; Gibson's satirical edge is soft, presenting bourgeois domesticity with the affectionate irony typical of his early *Life* period before the Gibson Girl iconography fully crystallized.