Decorative Frontispiece: Comedy Masks with Roses and Trumpets

This pen-and-ink frontispiece from Richard Harding Davis's *Her First Appearance* (Harper, 1901) functions as an ornamental title-page vignette rather than a satirical cartoon proper. Suspended from a bow on a ribbon, a central grinning comedy mask—broad, exaggerated, wide-mouthed—flanks two profile faces and is crowned with paired herald trumpets and rose garlands; a trailing stem of roses hangs below. The whole composition is enclosed in an Art Nouveau rococo border of scrolling acanthus. The grinning mask reads in the theatrical tradition of *commedia dell'arte* rather than as ethnic caricature. As a theatrical metaphor for a young actress's debut, the image frames Davis's story about performance, ambition, and public judgment in Gilded Age New York—society as audience, the stage as society.