Here’s another Gibson card, #14001 in the Detroit Publishing series. This one is unused but quite beaten up around the edges, a common problem with my Gibson cards.
This cartoon exhibits some pretty odd perspective, with our gentleman and lady seemingly in an athletic crouching position, hovering just above a nicely cushioned bench. Take a load off, folks! Also, isn’t that palmist a brunette? If so I don’t really get the gag.
The perspective's fine, I think, it's just that they are both turned toward each other. If he'd drawn the rear edge of the sofa (over which the man's tails are draped) it would make more sense.
Was parlor palm-reading a kind of high-class flirting? In that case, maybe he thinks the dark-haired woman is flirting with him, but she is telling him, in so many words, that she is not.
This cartoon was the center spread in Life, 4 November 1897.