• Dialogue in image:

Fashionably-attired African-American woman

"Have you any flesh-coloured silk stockings, young man?"

French shop-attendant (who knows exactly what to do to please the customer)

"Oui, Madame! Here is von pair of de first qualité."

[Meaning: "Yes ma'am, here is a pair which is of the highest quality."]

Monogramm unten rechts:

A caricature showing an African-American woman shopping while dressed in the very latest of high fashions; her similarly-attired friend waits in the doorway for her to finish her purchase. As caricaturists often did, the size of the woman's hat is exaggerated, and the skirts are shown a little shorter than they would have been in real life (see Image:Waist-and-Extravagance-ca-1830-fashion-satire-Heath.jpg for another typical example of these standard caricaturists' tricks from the same period).

Edited from the image http://memory.loc.gov/master/pnp/cph/3g00000/3g02000/3g02400/3g02441u.tif at the Library of Congress website

CALL NUMBER: PGA - Clay, Edward W.--Life in Philadelphia (A size) [P&P]
REPRODUCTION NUMBER: LC-USZC4-2441 (color film copy transparency)
LC-USZ62-119316 (b&w film copy neg.)
REPOSITORY: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division
Washington, D.C. 20540 USA
DIGITAL ID: (color film copy transparency) cph 3g02441
http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3g02441
(b&w film copy neg.) cph 3c19316
http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3c19316