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Title: A Selection of Cartoons from Puck

Author: Joseph Ferdinand Keppler

Contributor: H. C. Bunner

Release date: May 25, 2019 [eBook #59604]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Chris Curnow, Charlie Howard, and the Online
        Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
        file was produced from images generously made available
        by The Internet Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A SELECTION OF CARTOONS FROM PUCK ***




Produced by Chris Curnow, Charlie Howard, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
file was produced from images generously made available
by The Internet Archive)









Transcriber’s Note


This eBook has no Table of Contents, but all of the cartoons are listed
in the Index at the end.




[Illustration:

  CARTOONS
  FROM
  “PUCK”

  1877–1893
]




  Copyright, 1893, by KEPPLER & SCHWARZMANN.


  [Illustration]


  300 COPIES PRINTED AND BOUND IN THIS MANNER,
  OF WHICH THIS IS NO. 92.

[Illustration:

  J.K.
  1893

Jos. Keppler.]




  J. KEPPLER


  A SELECTION OF

  CARTOONS FROM PUCK

  BY

  JOSEPH KEPPLER


  WITH TEXT AND INTRODUCTION

  BY

  H. C. BUNNER


  [Illustration]


  KEPPLER & SCHWARZMANN
  NEW YORK

  MDCCCXCIII




[Illustration]




INTRODUCTION.


So careless has been the popular use of the words “_cartoonist_” and
“_caricaturist_,” that to many minds they no doubt seem practically
interchangeable. Yet, as a matter of fact, not only do the two titles
imply two different functions of pictorial satiric art, but, although
there is a school of that art for almost every one of the great races
of civilized men, there is but one school that positively demands the
union of these two factors in the work of its pupils. That school is
the German school, and it is Mr. Joseph Keppler who, as an American
cartoonist and caricaturist, has not only imposed its canons and
traditions upon this country, but has, in so doing, placed himself at
its head, both in this country and in Europe, by virtue of a genius
that has made him eminent above the generation of his masters.

The spirit of French comic art turns distinctly--and delightfully--to
caricature. The French “cartoon”--the pictorial lampoon, that is--has
but to exhibit in an exaggerated form the objectionable characteristics
of an individual, to serve its purpose and to touch its public. It is
the revelation of character, of purpose, of intellectual or moral scope
which affects, apparently, the French mind, by nature rather observant
than deductive. The Anglo-Saxon spirit, less quickly perceptive, more
deliberately logical, asks something beyond this of the man who tries
to reason with it in a picture. It must be approached by means of a
fable, a parable, an allegory, something that will stand the test of
argument and comparison. Caricature, or the significant exaggeration of
physical characteristics, may or may not be an incident to this.

Few of the English cartoonists, for instance, have been caricaturists
of any account. The greatest of them all, John Tenniel, is a cartoonist
pure and simple--that is, one who draws allegories or parables. In
his delightful “Alice in Wonderland” work, he shows his power of
caricature; but in his cartoons he is classically faithful to nature,
save for just sufficient accentuation to point his satiric intent. And
in the United States, up to twenty years ago, the prime idea of the
cartoonist was simply to express in drawing a figure of speech--and the
more realistically the better.

If it seems a remarkable thing that the influence of one man should
avail to change the taste of a nation in such a manner, it must be
remembered that the breadth and force of the German school which
Mr. Keppler introduced into this country were peculiarly calculated
to appeal to a receptive people, delighting in vigorous expression.
For the German school carries the art and mystery of cartooning far
beyond any of its rivals. The German conception of the cartoon not only
involves a picture parable, it demands that the actors of the fable
shall be so drawn as to display their characters in their lineaments,
and it asks, moreover, that the allegory shall, if possible, take a
distinctive dramatic form, suggestive, at least, of action, and not
merely of position.

It was not in the American nature to refuse to recognize the pregnant
possibilities of such a school of satiric art. Nor did Mr. Keppler
fail to grasp the vast possibilities opened to him by the freedom of
American laws and American tradition--social and political.

This collection of Mr. Keppler’s cartoons is not by any means intended
to summarize his work during the sixteen years in which he has drawn
for PUCK--or it would be treble its present size. It simply brings
together such examples of his work as may now with propriety be
reprinted. This is no slight volume, yet it contains, comparatively,
but a narrow choice of the hundreds of cartoons Mr. Keppler has drawn
for PUCK. It is surprising to consider that this great output is to
be credited to a man who has only attained the fullness of life; for
Joseph Keppler is but fifty-five years old. He was born in Vienna,
February 1st, 1838. His early life was a struggle with poverty; but it
was a blithesome and cheerful-hearted struggle, almost romantically
full of incident and adventure. He was with equal ease an actor and
an artist; and at one time, with a very natural longing for Italy, he
wandered through Styria and the Tyrol and, again, through Hungary,
making vain attempts, balked by constant misfortune, to enter the land
of art. In 1856 he settled down to serious study at the Académie des
Beaux Arts of Vienna. Although his capacity as an artist was increasing
year by year, he possessed a histrionic talent that made it hard for
him to give up the stage, and as manager and actor he was connected
with the theatre even for several years after his arrival in America in
1868. His first years in America were passed in the West; and in St.
Louis he started two humorous weeklies, _Die Vehme_ and a too-early
PUCK. The gods loved both of these ventures too well. It was in 1877
that Mr. Keppler, in association with Mr. Adolph Schwarzmann, first
introduced to the American public the school of cartooning which has
now become as much ours as Germany’s. This was through the medium of a
German edition of PUCK. The English PUCK was born on March 7th, 1877.

To his colleague of sixteen years’ side-by-side working time, it is a
great pleasure to claim for Joseph Keppler the masterhood in the brave
art whose present form he introduced to America, and which he has used
with enduring courage and growing knowledge to more good ends than need
here be told.

_March 20th, 1893._

                    _H. C. Bunner._




A LITTLE CHANGE; OR, POLITICS MAKES STRANGE BEDFELLOWS.

_PUCK, October 4th, 1876._


These two expressive portraitures of two distinguished
German-Americans, General Sigel and the Hon. Carl Schurz, appeared
in the initial number of the German PUCK (New York) as interesting
specimens of Mr. Keppler’s skill as a caricaturist, pure and simple.
They had no timely significance in particular.

[Illustration]




THE DEMOC-RATS CAUGHT IN THE PRESIDENTIAL TRAP.

_PUCK, February 28th, 1877._


The idea of this cartoon is not free from guilty obligation to a small
pun; yet it depicts the situation of the Democratic Party in the last
months of 1876 with considerable aptitude and force. It appeared at the
time when the Democrats in Congress had been hoodwinked into accepting
the Electoral Commission scheme, which deprived Mr. Tilden of the
Presidency, and put Mr. Hayes in the chair. Under these circumstances,
it was certainly truthful, even if it was trite, to say that the
“Democ-Rats” were caught in the political trap.

[Illustration:

                    THE
                    DEMOC-RATS
                    CAUGHT IN THE PRESIDENTIAL
                    Trap

  [ZUR PRESIDENTEN-FRAGE]

WIE DIE DEMOK-RATTEN IN DIESEM FALLE IN DIESE FALLE GERIETHEN.]




CONSOLIDATED.

_PUCK, January 26th, 1881._


“The telegraph companies have been consolidated, which in simple
language means that Mr. Jay Gould controls every wire in the United
States over which a telegram can be sent,” said PUCK of January 26th,
1881, and the statement was no exaggeration.

The editorial went on to express a fear that this monopoly of
telegraphic facilities might be used for stock-jobbing purposes, as
it made suppression or falsification of price-quotations not only
possible, but temptingly easy. This fear was far from groundless at
the time, although it has since been removed by the enormous growth
of the business of electrical communication, which has now become a
machine too huge to be readily perverted from its proper working by any
one man. It is, however, undeniable that the Western Union wires were
misused for parties and purposes in the doubtful and troublous days
immediately succeeding the Presidential election of 1884. At the time
when this cartoon was published there was a very general feeling that
the federal government ought to take charge of the whole telegraphic
system. This feeling, however, changed when the people realized that
a postal telegraph scheme would practically involve the enrollment
of a new army of office-holders who would be, under our inadequate
and ineffective civil-service reform laws, merely the hirelings and
henchmen of the party in power. Although the phrase “pernicious
activity” had not yet been coined to characterize the performances
of unscrupulous office-holders, the people had seen quite enough of
the thing itself to want no more of it; and the project of government
interference became unpopular. At the same time, it can not be said
that Mr. Gould, who lived until 1892, ever inspired the people with
confidence or made any recognizable attempt to that end.

[Illustration]




AN ATTACK ON OUR OUTER RAMPARTS.

_PUCK, April 22nd, 1885._


The so-called “Freedom of Worship Bill Controversy” has been carried
on so many years, through so many varying phases and under such
exceptional and peculiar conditions, that it has become most difficult
of description and characterization. Its exciting cause is a bill
introduced into the New York legislature ostensibly in the interests of
what might be called sectarian fair play. On the face of it, it aims
to secure to the Catholic, confined by sickness or for other reasons
in a public institution, the right to enjoy the ministrations of his
religion at the hands of a priest of the Roman Church. Its opponents
have alleged that it is calculated to go much farther than this in
practical effect, and to afford a foothold for the regular and official
installment of Roman Catholic Priests in the public institutions of
the state. The bill has appeared and reappeared for many years. It
has assumed many forms, has provoked a vast amount of discussion, and
has engaged the interest of a very large, and in some respects a very
peculiar, collection of friends and enemies. Its good faith has always
been questioned, and we do not think it is expressing an _ex parte_
opinion to say that it has always been open to question--in view of the
breadth and comprehensiveness of our American common law as applied to
the civil rights of the citizen and the equal status of all religious
organizations in the commonwealth. At the time (April 22, 1885,) when
this cartoon was printed, the bill had appeared in a form which gave
good reason for the belief, in which the whole press of New York
shared, that it was a covert attack upon non-sectarian institutions.

It is to be hoped that this cause of so much contention will some day
be forgotten in the natural growth of a spirit of religious tolerance.

[Illustration]




THE POLITICAL “ARMY OF SALVATION.”

_PUCK, March 31st, 1880._


Loyalty and lack of moderation were equally marked as characteristic
of the support which Mr. Roscoe Conkling gave to any cause that
enlisted his sympathies. The hot, unreasoning, fanatical vehemence
of the attempt which he made in 1880 to dragoon the Republican party
into nominating General Grant for a third term undoubtedly made the
third term idea far more unpopular than a more judicious advocacy
might have made it. Mr. Conkling treated the question of General
Grant’s nomination almost as though it were a matter of divine right;
and although Mr. Conkling himself had a right to be considered honest
in his enthusiasm, as much could not be said for the most of his
active assistants in the management of the “Boom”--among whom were
Ex-Secretaries Belknap and Robeson, two officials who had reflected
anything but credit upon General Grant’s cabinet, Boss Shepherd, and
other members of the ring that had been formed in Washington during the
Ex-President’s second administration. The artist has drawn a parallel
between the methods employed by the “Salvation Army,” which had invaded
this country a little while before, and those of the “halcyon and
vociferous” Mr. Conkling--to quote his own immortal phrase.

[Illustration]




THE CINDERELLA OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY AND HER HAUGHTY SISTERS.

_PUCK, October 13th, 1880._


During the Presidential campaign of 1880, which ended in the
election of Mr. Garfield, Mr. R. B. Hayes, then the incumbent of the
Presidential chair, was treated with studied neglect and coldness by
the leaders of his own party. Although General Grant had failed to get
the nomination at the Chicago convention, in spite of the vigorous
efforts of Mr. Roscoe Conkling, the ex-President and his ally were
prominent in the campaign on their own account.

“They speak at mass-meetings, they are interviewed, they write letters;
they are never out of the public eye,” says PUCK of October 13th, 1880.
Mr. Hayes, however, received no pressing invitation from the party
managers to assist in electing their Republican ticket. Undoubtedly
this deliberate slight was due to the extreme sensitiveness felt by
all classes of Republicans on the question of Mr. Hayes’s title to the
office which he held; and it was in its inception a creditable feeling
that prompted the desire to keep him in the background. At the same
time, it was a severe, almost a cruel retribution to be visited upon
a man who had tried hard to atone for his capture of the Presidential
chair by trick and device, by giving the country an uncommonly good,
and, in some respects, decidedly courageous administration. Messrs.
Grant and Conkling seemed to be solicitous to draw attention to their
complete silence concerning the outgoing administration, and their
enthusiasm in Mr. Garfield’s behalf. Although, to quote again from
PUCK, “both these talkative gentlemen might have found their eloquence
at a discount if Mr. Hayes had not kept up the score of the party
through the last four years.”

“His administration will be held notable, in days to come, not merely
for its positive performances, its vetos of the infamous Silver Bill
and the unconstitutional Chinese Act; but for its negative excellence.
He has done his duty as he saw it. If he has made himself ridiculous by
carrying the contemptibly small social practices of a little Ohio town
into the wider sphere of life to which Fate has introduced him, it is a
pardonable fault. Let us say for him, after all, that, considering the
wretched way in which he got to be President, he has done far too well
with his chances to be snubbed by men in such equivocal positions as
Messrs. Grant and Conkling.”

[Illustration]




A HARMLESS EXPLOSION.

_PUCK, May 25th, 1881._


Mr. Conkling’s resignation to the Senate, in hope of re-election under
circumstances which would have made such a triumph a severe rebuke to
President Garfield, proved to be, as most people foresaw, the end of
his political career. But, at the time, there were plenty of people to
applaud his act and to liken his resignation to a “bombshell” thrown
into the Senate. It was a sort of fireworks bombshell that destroyed
nothing but itself, but it made a great noise for the moment. Mr. T. C.
Platt chose at the same time to pop his toy balloon, and probably
thought that it made part of the noise.

[Illustration]




PUCK’S POLITICAL HUNTING GROUND.--HOW HE HAS MADE GAME OF THE
POLITICIANS.

_PUCK, January 14th, 1885._


The first cartoons were doubtless chalked on dead walls, and even when
the art reached a higher development, sticking to walls remained the
cheapest and most convenient method of publication. It is often a test
of a cartoon’s worth to-day--its suitability as a wall-decoration.
It is a natural and simple impulse that moves us to pin on the wall
the picture that has pleased us. Readers of PUCK who travel much in
this country can not but notice how many people delight in pasting
and pinning their favorite cartoons to the walls of their offices
and workshops, and even of their dwelling-houses. A really popular
cartoon is always sure of these humble but well-meant honors; and,
curiously enough, experience has shown that next to the really telling
“hit,” a playful, familiarly puzzling trifle like “PUCK’S Political
Hunting-Ground,” if it is conceived with some grace and prettiness, is
the most certain of this sort of popular favor. This particular picture
was, no doubt, made attractive to many by the simple puzzle afforded by
the faces of the animals. As, however, the passing of time must make
some of these faces unfamiliar, it may be well to offer the following
key--first calling attention to the fact that all the personages
introduced were at the moment, in one way or another, at odds with
fortune--except the late Mr. Jay Gould, who is figured as a bird of
prey (in a general way, and with no over-particular ornithological
accuracy) comfortably bearing off a lamb. The fact that this one figure
of success is quite unconscious of the attempts of PUCK’S water-dog
to catch him, may be supposed to show the usual disregard that Wealth
entertains for Wit:

The fox, of course, is the ingenious Mr. James G. Blaine. The hyena,
ex-speaker Kiefer, and the next animal of doubtful breed “Star Route”
or “Soap” Dorsey. The paw and the head seen in the reeds behind the
dog belong to Brady. The lineaments of Ben Butler may be discerned in
the head of the frog, and the nature of the beast in the distention of
the belly thereof. At the other end of the cartoon, General Grant’s
features, without distortion or caricature, fit the head of the dead
lion. Next to him “Secor” Robeson lies in the similitude of a dead
boar, incapable of mischief for all his glaring eye-balls. In the
foreground, Roscoe Conkling lies a dead pouter pigeon. (Caricaturists
frequently showed Mr. Conkling as a pouter pigeon, but most of them
carried the analogy too far and made a frail, spindle-shanked thing
of him. In this picture the thickly feathered legs and stout frame of
the bird do not bely its sturdy original.) The owl is the late John
Kelly--and a powerful and accurate owl he was, too, in his time! The
pendent monkey is T. C. Platt, who was at that time suffering from one
of the temporary eclipses which flecked the pathway of the political
adventurer with appropriate forecasts of oblivion.

[Illustration]




THE UNIVERSAL CHURCH OF THE FUTURE--FROM THE PRESENT RELIGIOUS OUTLOOK.

_PUCK, January 10th, 1883._


The times change, and we change with them. When this cartoon was
designed, the popular theological fad was the harmonization of science
and religion, and the immediate cause of its appearance was some
utterance, now forgotten, but at the time considered highly audacious,
of the Reverend Heber Newton. It was, we believe, the introduction of
the practice of “slumming” which changed the current of clerical taste.

[Illustration]




POSITIVELY LAST AWAKENING OF THE DEMOCRATIC RIP VAN WINKLE.

_PUCK, October 27th, 1880._


The picture of the Democratic party as Rip Van Winkle was suggested by
the fact that in 1880, when it appeared, (Oct. 27) the party had been
for just twenty years wrapt in the sleep of political inactivity. The
figure of the old sleeper is the one made familiar by Mr. Jefferson’s
wonderful interpretation. He starts up from his twenty years’ slumber
to see a spectral host flit by him, as he lies upon the mountain
crag--Douglas, Greeley, McClellan, Seymour, Tilden, and Hancock the
Superb, leading the doomed line of hapless Presidential candidates. The
mean realities of life are represented by the two fiery-eyed owls in
the tree at the old man’s back--General B. F. Butler and Mr. John Kelly
of Tammany Hall, who never appeared in national politics, except as
secret and mischievous birds of prey.

Down in the right-hand lower corner of the picture a pocket-flask
labelled “Bourbon” may puzzle the reader who turns this page a
generation hence. It is a sly reference to a jest well known and well
understood at the time,--it had a much earlier origin. The Democrats
were called Bourbons because it was supposed that “they never learned
anything and never forgot anything.” As it happened, Bourbon County,
Kentucky, had given its name to a brand of whiskey at that time in
great favor. As whiskey was America’s democratic drink, in the broader
sense of the word, by a natural association of ideas Bourbon whiskey
was set down as the drink of the Democratic party. It was generally
known as “Bourbon” and pronounced “Burbin.”

[Illustration]




JUST THE DIFFERENCE.

_PUCK, July 28th, 1880._


This cartoon depicts so simply and clearly the position of the two
great parties and their respective leaders in the early part of the
campaign of 1880 that even at this date it hardly calls for any
elucidation whatever.

It may, however, be proper to note that the placing of Mr. Arthur as a
burden upon Mr. Garfield’s back, in the bag labeled “Credit Mobilier”
and “De Golyer Contract,” is not intended to imply that Mr. Arthur
himself had any connection with these scandals. Mr. Arthur himself
undoubtedly was regarded as an incumbrance to Mr. Garfield’s canvass
because of his very unwise choice of associates among the politicians
of New York, and his singular indifference to the regard of the people
with whom his birth and breeding should naturally have led him to
affiliate. In this it must be admitted that Mr. Arthur did himself an
injustice, for which, however, he amply atoned when Mr. Garfield’s
death threw upon him the responsibilities of the Chief Executive.

[Illustration:

  HE CARRIES THE PARTY.      THE PARTY CARRIES HIM.
]




A MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL!

_PUCK, December 22d. 1880._


There are few more tragic or startling pages in our political history
than those which record Mr. Garfield’s brief career as the national
leader of his party. Nominated for President in the Chicago Convention
of 1880, after the collapse of the Grant Third-Term Movement, (although
it was generally supposed that he was too firmly committed to the
interests of Senator Sherman to enter the lists on his own account,)
he was elected in November, after a somewhat heated campaign, during
which much publicity was given to his unfortunate dealings with the
Crédit-Mobilier people and other objectionable speculators. His
opponent was General Hancock, a soldier and a gentleman of unblemished
reputation. He owed his defeat partly to certain utterances concerning
the tariff question which, though just in themselves, were injudicious
in view of the popular sentiment of the time; partly to the wide-spread
distrust of the Democratic party that then prevailed, and partly,
as Mr. S. W. Dorsey, one of Mr. Garfield’s campaign-managers, most
gratuitously and indecently announced after election, to wholesale
bribery in the State of Indiana. (This was the notorious “Soap” Dorsey,
so called from his using “soap” as a euphemism for bribe-money.)

By a permissible pictorial license, the artist, in PUCK of December
22nd, 1880, represents the President-Elect as already quartered within
the White House, distributing the spoils of office as presents from a
Christmas tree. Around him are the leaders of the Republican party:
General Grant, Senator John Sherman, Don Cameron, General Logan,
Vice-President Chester A. Arthur, and Carl Schurz in the foreground;
James G. Blaine and Marshall P. Jewell (the collector of the
campaign-fund) in a corner. The shadow of Roscoe Conkling’s head and of
the ambrosial curl which was supposed still to linger on his brow, is
thrown upon the side of the window-casing, but from what quarter it is
projected is difficult to determine. Mr. Conkling’s attitude toward the
new administration was dubious and peculiar.

Outside, in the cold Winter night, are the Democrats gazing hungrily
into the lighted windows. The head of Mr. W. H. English, the defeated
candidate for Vice-President, rises from a barrel, supposed to
represent the large fortune which alone gave him any political
standing. Mr. James Gordon Bennett appears in the character of a
sportsman who has brought down a large owl-like bird having the
features of Mr. John Kelly--the New York _Herald_ was credited with
having obtained the local victory over the Tammany leader. “Up in a
tree,” are Tilden, Wade Hampton, L. Q. C. Lamar, Chairman Barnum of the
Democratic Committee, General B. F. Butler (constructively a Democrat,
for cartoon purposes), and Thomas F. Bayard.

“To the man of statelier figure, who stands outside, but not among
the shivering crowd of malcontents,” PUCK wished that year a Merry
Christmas; and hoped that there would be many Merry Christmases for
him, if not in the White House, at least “in the place where he well
served the country.” The wish was vain: General Hancock died not long
after.

[Illustration]




“A SAIL! A SAIL!”

_PUCK, July 2nd, 1884._


This simple but effective cartoon hardly requires any further
elucidation than is afforded by the date of its publication. It
appeared on July 2nd, 1884, immediately after the nomination of Mr.
Blaine at the Republican Convention at Chicago, and the consequent bolt
of the Independent Republicans and so-called Mugwumps. With reference
to the appearance in the picture of Mr. John Kelly in the attitude of
a hostile savage, we need only say that the readiness of the Tammany
Hall of that day to stab the Democratic Party in the back whenever it
furthered its own ends by so doing was something that was more than
suspected then, and that was conclusively proved in the first Cleveland
and Harrison campaign.

[Illustration]




SAMUEL J. TILDEN.

_PUCK, August 11th, 1886._


“Mr. Tilden’s death is to be regretted by his friends and by his
political enemies. He was a man of principles and ideas. He had
ambitions that looked higher than to the mere accumulation of money
or the acquirement of that cheap, ephemeral power which flatters
some small souls. And beside this he had courage and independence,
and the breeding and education of a gentleman. Many were forced, by
conscience and conviction, to oppose his political aspirations; but
all found him an adversary to be respected, and a man of dignity and
power. History must record of Samuel J. Tilden that he did his best to
purify a great party fallen into a frightful moral decadence in its
own Capuan stronghold,--must note his wonderful work in the cause of
civic honesty and good government, and his loyalty to his country at
a time when all his affiliations must have inclined him to disloyalty
or to an indifferent neutrality. And more than this, History must say
of him that he suffered a cruel wrong with dignified fortitude, and by
his wisdom and self-restraint relieved his country from a well-grounded
fear of dangerous civil disturbance. Remembering this, it is easy for
the most partisan spirit to forget much else, and to do honor to the
dead statesman and patriot.”--PUCK, _August 11th, 1886_.

[Illustration]




LET US HAVE PEACE, NOW A PRESIDENT’S ELECTED.

_PUCK, November 3d, 1880._


PUCK for November 3d, 1880, went to press, of course, too early to
receive the news of the result of the election. Consequently the
cartoonist had to content himself with constructing this curious puzzle
picture, in which may be found, with a little study, the portraits of
the Republican and Democratic candidates, as well as those of many
other prominent public men, including Mr. Roscoe Conkling, Mr. J. G.
Blaine, Mr. Carl Schurz, Mr. Marshall P. Jewell, Mr. Chester A. Arthur,
General U. S. Grant, Mr. R. B. Hayes, Mr. Samuel J. Tilden, Mr. Wm. H.
English, General John A. Logan, Mr. John Kelly, (of New York City,)
General B. F. Butler, Mr. Thos. F. Bayard, and Mr. Abram S. Hewitt.

“There is, moreover,” PUCK goes on to say, “something more in that
cartoon. There is a gentle hint of a duty that we have forgotten too
long, in the excitement of that wild political fight--the duty of
going back to the plain old ideal of friendly federation which our
forefathers had constantly in mind. We do not wish to talk any of
the cheap cant about clasping hands over the bloody chasm. All the
hand-shaking in the world won’t close a crevasse up. But is this
nonsense to go on forever? We hope not. The work of the campaign is
done. A President is elected. There will be no need of renewing the
battle for another four years. Let us see if we can not use those four
years in making preparations for a contest on a broader basis--on
points less mean, less cheap and malicious. There is time, in these
four years, for the honest men, North and South, to come to some
understanding with each other; to make up their minds as to what are
dead and what are living issues; to build up a new party, or two new
parties, if need be, and to make the Presidential election of 1884 a
respectable contest, between people who, however they may disagree on
matters of principle or opinion, have all but one end in view--a wise
and honest government.”

[Illustration]




ON THE ROAD.

CONKLING.--Want a guide, sir? GARFIELD.--No; thank you!

_PUCK, February 2nd, 1881._


This cartoon sketches fairly the situation a month before Mr.
Garfield’s inauguration in 1881. Mr. Conkling had shown a certain
willingness to lend a hand to Mr. Garfield’s administration, and Mr.
Garfield had shown no willingness whatever to accept the proffered
hand. It was not to be expected that Mr. Conkling would prove himself
an unreservedly loyal and disinterested Secretary of State, and there
was little room for doubt that the desire of Messrs. Don Cameron and
J. A. Logan to hold office under the President-Elect was of the most
strictly selfish sort.

       *       *       *       *       *

_Note.--As the word “Mentor,” on the flag over the distant
dwelling-house shown in this cartoon, might be supposed to have some
ulterior significance, it may be well to say that it is simply the name
of Mr. Garfield’s home and P. O. address in Ohio._

[Illustration]




A HUMILIATING SPECTACLE.

_PUCK, August 31st, 1881._


The situation, which this cartoon, published in PUCK of August 31st,
1881, commemorates after a peculiarly forcible fashion, is too
unpleasant to invite further comment than is absolutely necessary
to explain it. During the latter part of the Summer of 1881, while
President Garfield lay dying from an assassin’s bullet, certain
politicians of a peculiarly coarse fibre were unwilling to wait for
his death to make their arrangements for the distribution of the
spoils of office under his successor. These were not men who were in
any way concerned in shaping the course of the government in matters
of statecraft or policy; they were simply out for the spoils, as the
phrase goes, and their undisguised eagerness was scandalous under the
circumstances.

PUCK said at the time, with more moderation than, viewed in the light
of subsequent events, the occasion called for: “Whether presidents live
or die, the game of politics goes on. It is humiliating and deplorable,
but it is nevertheless true that many professional politicians of more
or less reputation are carefully laying their plans of procedure in the
event of the decease of the dying President, We will not wrong these
gentlemen by saying that they desire his death; but it is scarcely
decent to raise even a discussion on the most trivial matter connected
with mere machine politics, before the vital spark has fled from the
body of the chief magistrate. Although his presumptive, or, to use a
monarchical term, his apparent successor has acted throughout in a
manly and modest way, there are political friends of his whose demeanor
has not been distinguished by the sympathy and consideration that, at
least, might be expected on such an occasion.”

[Illustration]




UNCLE SAM’S LODGING HOUSE.

_PUCK, June 7th, 1882._


In 1882 (June 7th), when “Uncle Sam’s Lodging House” was drawn, the
Irish “patriots,” who were trying to free their country by exploding
dynamite in public places, had made this country their base of
supplies, and were especially active in New York and Chicago. Their
lawlessness created much excitement, and if it had not been that there
was more bluster than performance about their pernicious liveliness
they might have involved us in a war with Great Britain, in which we
should certainly have lacked the moral support of our own conscience.
These gentry did not relish the stand PUCK took in the matter, and
their threats of reprisal by dynamite were frequent. The rate of letter
postage had some time previously been reduced from three to two cents.

[Illustration]




OPENING A LITTLE CAMPAIGN ALL BY HIMSELF.

_PUCK, September 6th, 1882._


The Summer of 1882 was just changing to Fall when Mr. Blaine made
a notable speech at Portland, Me., which was generally received as
an announcement of his determination to seek the nomination for the
Presidency in 1884. In this speech, which attracted great attention,
he stated with singular clearness his position in politics, affirming
the moral right of the Republican Party to a continuance in rule on
the strength of its record. This was, we believe, the first clear,
frank and open enunciation of this idea in all its naked simplicity.
It has formed since then the stock in trade of many candidates and of
countless campaign orators, but the credit of putting it fairly and
squarely before the people belongs to Mr. Blaine, and it should be
noted that the time he chose to express his views was one in which
most Republicans were offering apologies or explanations for the past
and present shortcomings of their party. Mr. Blaine reaped no personal
benefit from the enterprise he displayed in taking this bold stand,
but he undoubtedly gave his party a lesson in audacity by which it
profited materially. It was what might be called a “bluff,” and it was
certainly a big and effective bluff. At the time when it was made its
far-sighted cleverness was under-estimated, and its insincerity was so
apparent that the reader of that day could have had little difficulty
in seeing why PUCK suggested to Mr. Blaine to abandon his extreme and
untenable position, and to take another, which would have been at
once more credible and more popular. It is curious that the idea with
which Mr. Blaine inspired his party should have been the means of his
own undoing, and, in some measure, of electing Mr. Harrison to the
Presidency over his head.

[Illustration]




BLAINE LEAVING THE CAPITOL.--“I GO--BUT I RETURN!”

_PUCK, December 21st, 1881._


Mr. Blaine was the most highly honored of President Garfield’s cabinet
officers. In the convention that nominated Mr. Garfield he had been,
next to General Grant, Garfield’s most dangerous rival--or, perhaps it
would be more correct to say that he might have been, had the time been
ripe for him to exert his full strength. So, when President Garfield
died, and Mr. Arthur, who had been an unpopular candidate for the
Vice-Presidency, succeeded to the Presidential chair, two apparent
probabilities interested the populace. It was assumed, of course,
that a President must be a candidate for re-election and under such
circumstances it was thought that in all likelihood Mr. Blaine would
be far more powerful in the next convention than a President who owed
his elevation to mere accident. Thus, when Mr. Blaine made his bow and
retired from the cabinet formed by President Garfield, his very leaving
seemed to imply a threat that he would return to Washington only to
assume a prouder position.

PUCK of December 21st, 1881, says, discussing the possibility of Mr.
Blaine’s election to the Presidency:

“There are two or three miracles which we would gladly see worked in
this country. There is that great miracle which always seems near at
hand, yet which never seems nearer--the miracle of a great popular
awakening to a healthy political life.... Is it not a disgrace,
indeed, that we should talk about electing to the highest office in
the nation a man of whom an honest, unprejudiced and unbiased journal
has to say that although he is clever and strong, he has not an
absolutely unblemished record?! An absolutely unblemished record! Why,
a statesman’s record should be as unblemished as a woman’s should be.
And yet it is very possible that we shall find the man of whom this is
said the very best man whom it is possible to put at the head of our
Government in 1884. Is it not time for a miracle?”

It was pretty nearly time: the miracle was worked in 1884.

[Illustration]




HELPING THE RASCALS IN.

_PUCK, October 22nd, 1884._


The New York _Sun’s_ “bolt” of the Democratic ticket during the
Cleveland Campaign of 1884 was so characteristic, so extravagant and
so funny in its fantastic futility, that it can not be forgotten, even
now. This cartoon appeared about the time that Mr. Chas. A. Dana was
running General Benj. F. Butler as a candidate for the Presidency,
and was predicting for that harlequin among political adventurers a
majority over Mr. Cleveland in the City of New York. General Butler
came out of the death-struggle with four-thousand-odd-hundred votes,
_in all_, as his share of the suffrages of New York’s citizens; and
Mr. Dana, a day or two after the election, blithely caroled, to the
somewhat discordant accompaniment of his organ:

    “We may be happy yet,
          You bet.”

[Illustration]




QUALITY COUNTS.

_PUCK, April 11th, 1888._


The editorial article accompanying this picture draws a curious
historical parallel between the characters of Samuel Pepys and Grover
Cleveland, with a side glance at “South Sea Bubble” Law and certain
moderns who resemble him in certain ways. After sketching Pepys’s
career in the British Admiralty Office, the article closes:

“‘A man of the old way of taking pains,’ they called him in that
degenerate day. Is not that even now a good standard by which to test
public service? Is all greatness to lie in bluster, noise, braggadocio,
and what we are pleased to call ‘smartness’? These were the attributes
of the men who were the official superiors of Samuel Pepys just two
centuries ago. The world has forgotten their names. But the old fashion
of honest service is still honorable. Those who have borne with us so
far in this historical recital may forgive us if we suggest a modern
instance. A few weeks ago, the presiding officer of the United States
Senate told his distinguished audience that no man was so mean or so
obscure that he might not be President of the United States, now that
Grover Cleveland held that place. Mr. Grover Cleveland was a lawyer in
one of our smaller cities. He became, successively, Sheriff and Mayor
of his town, Governor of his state, and President of the United States.
In every office he has done his duty ‘in the old way of taking pains.’
He has had no hand in the corruption of political life; he has never
been the pensioner of corporate monopolies. As Sheriff, Mayor, Governor
and President he has served the people honestly and wisely, ‘in the old
way of taking pains.’ To our mind this gives him a claim to the regard
and respect of the people that will not easily be shaken by the bluster
of his enemies. The people will look at the work he has done before
they decide whether or no he is President by accident--whether the Time
has done everything for him, he nothing--but what the little critic
could have done too.”

[Illustration:

  There was a great stir made among the Beasts,
  which could boast of the largest family.
  So they came to the Lioness.

  “And how many,” said they, “do you
  have at a birth?”

  “ONE,” said she, grimly; “but that one
  is a Lion!”

  _Æsop’s Fables, LXVIII._
]




THE CAROL OF THE “WAITS.”

_PUCK, December 23rd, 1885._


When Mr. Cleveland first became President in 1885, he put into practice
a much broader theory of Civil Service Reform than certain active
politicians of his party had any use for. Nor did he show any great
eagerness to shower offices and honors upon those members of his party
who had proved false to him in the campaign of the previous year. On
December 23rd, 1885, PUCK pictured these unfortunates as Christmas
“Waits,” standing outside the White House in the wintry cold, and
raising their voices in plaintive song:

    “God rest you, merry gentlemen,
      May nothing you dismay;
    Remember us poor spoilsmen left
      This blessed Christmas Day.

    “Since Christmas comes but once a year,
    Oh, let us share your Christmas cheer,
    And chuck one little office here
      On Christmas Day in the A. M.”

[Illustration]




AT LAST!

_PUCK, January 18th, 1888._


Another phase of the tariff question is illustrated in this cartoon,
which was designed to serve as an offset to the impudent accusations of
disloyal desire to serve English interests so frequently made by high
protectionists against all those who questioned their divine right to
profit by their ingenious scheme of taxation.

Adapting Sydney Smith’s famous formula to modern American use, PUCK
said on January 18th, 1888:

“You may sit down, O well-protected Average Citizen! at your protected
table, in your protected arm-chair; and button your protected coat
about you, and dream that your protective tariff is a drain on the
wealth of the English. But the fact remains that you pay every cent of
the duties that you impose upon foreign goods, and that nobody is the
worse off for the increased price, except yourself. The fact remains
that you pay for goods manufactured in this country the same price
which you pay for foreign-made goods of the same grade; that price
being greater than the fair price by the amount of the duty imposed.
And, above all, the disgraceful fact remains that all these goods on
which you pay a tax are brought to this country in English ships,
sailing under the English flag, which take back, on their homeward
trip, your American money, O Average Citizen! in payment of freight
imported by you in English bottoms. And yet, before we had a protective
tariff, we were able to do our carrying trade for ourselves.”

[Illustration]




SIEGFRIED, THE FEARLESS, IN THE POLITICAL DISMAL SWAMP.

_PUCK, December 28th, 1887._


When Mr. Cleveland began his now historic struggle for Tariff Reform
he found that he had to encounter more ignorance and apathy among the
public at large than he had reckoned on. In fact, he began his fight in
a very mist or fog of popular misconception, and his surroundings in
these first days were such as naturally suggested the grewsome allegory
which PUCK published on December 28th, 1887.

The animal-portraits in this picture are for the most part readily
recognizable--J. G. Blaine, John Sherman, Whitelaw Reid, W. M. Evarts,
B. F. Butler, T. C. Platt, (dead, but floating,) C. A. Dana and Joseph
Pulitzer. The owl in the left hand upper corner is Secretary Folger. In
the corner below him is Most, the anarchist. The hedge-hog and the wild
boar on the extreme right are Jacob Sharp and J. B. Foraker. The two
tails protruding from holes in the ground are reminders of the brief
period of activity enjoyed by Mr. Henry George and his clerical ally.

[Illustration]




A MIDSUMMER DAY’S DREAM.

_PUCK, August 10th, 1881._


Bright as is the idea which inspires this cartoon, it inspires only
the interest of reminiscence. PUCK’S chief cartoonist figures himself
as falling asleep upon a hot midsummer day, so soundly that during
his slumber the subjects of his facile pencil invade his studio and
use his drawing materials to depict themselves according to their
own conceit. Thus Roscoe Conkling, practically withdrawn from active
politics, portrays himself as a Jupiter Tonans in the prime of life,
and Mr. Whitelaw Reid, who was at the time accused of dallying with
æsthetic dandyism, appears as a figure somewhat like Mr. Gilbert’s
_Bunthorne_. Peter Cooper appears as a young and auburn-whiskered
man; and Mr. Tilden, even then in the feebleness of old age, sketches
himself as an ambitious athlete. Mr. James Gordon Bennett sketches
himself as the Apollo Belvidere. A subtle pun is here intended. Mr.
Bennett was then prominent through his efforts to introduce the game
of polo into this country. The patch on his nose marks the wound he
is supposed to have received in his mysterious encounter with Mr.
Frederick May, a disreputable man-about-town, with whom Mr. Bennett was
at one time intimate. Mr. John Kelly draws himself as a fashion-plate
model; and Mr. Beecher, whose lineaments age had made somewhat gross,
paints for his picture the likeness of the young man whose eloquence
and originality waked a new fire in the religious circles of the West.
Mr. Talmage draws himself as he perhaps would have liked to have people
think he looked. General Grant sketches a mighty emperor who bears
his features. And that curious political tramp, General Benjamin F.
Butler, uses the canvas to straighten out his curious, ugly mug into
the likeness of a good-looking man. The picture curiously suggests what
General Butler might have been had he been anything but the queer and
unpleasant thing he was.

[Illustration]




A RUSSIAN NOCTURNE.

_PUCK, March 23rd, 1881._


The hideous cruelties practised by the government of the Czar of Russia
on all those of his subjects who do not worship and adore the “Little
Father” with single-minded devotion and reverent awe, have more than
once furnished a subject for Mr. Keppler’s sympathetic pencil. At
the time of the appearance of this cartoon, in March of 1881, these
brutalities had attracted general attention throughout the civilized
world. Perhaps they were no worse than they had been before; but
there seemed to be reason to believe that they were just then of an
exceptional atrocity, the recent Russo-Turkish war having noticeably
stimulated the savage element in what one of their own artless writers
calls the “semi-barbarian race” of Russians.

[Illustration]




THE REIGN OF PEACE.--THE MOUSE IS SAFE WHILE THE MOON SHINES.

_PUCK, February 15th, 1888._


This cartoon bears date of February 15th, 1888, but it might have
appeared with very little variation at any time during the last ten
or twelve years of Bismarck’s premiership. While that great and clear
light shone in the European heavens nothing was left wholly to chance
in all that quarreling, jealous congeries of states. Nothing was
done--nothing was even planned that was not in some measure suggested
or shaped by that giant will and that alert and far-seeing intelligence.

It is worth while to call attention to the logical composition of this
cartoon. Observe that it is _thought out_ to the last point. The eye
takes in at a glance the thronging, hungry beasts of prey, the mighty
luminary hanging high in the firmament and the poor little Bulgarian
rat helpless on his little rock amidstream between the frowning cliffs,
yet safe in that clear radiance so long as it deigns to shine upon him.
But note the settled suggestion of warlike possibilities conveyed by
the helmet on the head of the Man in the Moon and the curious hints
of animal ferocity given by the lines under the heavy moustache, the
feline cleft in the middle, and the mane-like touches beside the
cheeks. Now, looking at the cat-like beasts of prey, observe that
Prussia occupies the point of advantage, and uses it to “stand off” the
approach of Russia, who crouches on a somewhat higher cliff, rapacious,
strong, eager, yet with wary eyes half-turned upon the ever-dreadful
Prussia. Follow that furtive cat-like glance a little further and you
will see that it takes cognizance of the sly approach toward the prey
which Austria is making under cover of Germany’s position. Italy and
France crawl on in the background, paying more attention to each other
than to their remote chances of individual gain. Russia and France, you
see, are on one side of the stream; the Triple Alliance of the hour
on the other. For a touch of interesting detail look at the figure of
France with its fine bushy beard, its red liberty cap, and its very
conspicuous epaulettes. To one who follows the nicety of the artist’s
symbolization, this indicates that the picture was drawn at the time
when “Boulangism” was rampant in Paris. It was not the era of Thiers,
the clean-shaven statesman, or the _vieux Militaire_ time of MacMahon,
or the time of Grévy with his little bourgeois whiskers. It was a
sort of bogus-Gambetta revival, which is aptly characterized here in
features that suggest those of President Carnot, without permitting the
weak amiability of his expression to typify militant France. And--one
thing more--note how that whole picture, by means of color, composition
and perspective, centres itself to your eye in one little figure that
does not occupy (by measure) the one two-hundredth part of its space.

[Illustration]




IN MEMORIAM EMPEROR WILLIAM I.--HOW HE FOUND GERMANIA, AND HOW HE
LEAVES HER.

_PUCK, March 21st, 1888._


“There was one King in Europe two weeks ago, one King worthy of the
name, and there is none to-day. And in this fact there is much more
significance than we of America are likely to note. To us a King is
an anachronism. His name is something that belongs to the time of
fable and fairy-story. We do not quite realize that he exists; that
he is still a power. There is an intrinsic unreasonableness in the
idea of his continuance, out of the world of fiction, that inclines
us to disbelieve in his very existence. We can hardly conceive of him
as anything more than a puppet--as a mere figure-head for a governing
ministry.

“But the late Emperor of Germany was a King. He was King of Prussia
before he was Emperor of Germany; and as King and Emperor he set up a
standard of conduct by which few men would care to govern their lives.
He tried to be a King, having a high conception of what a King should
be, and, as far as in him lay the power, he was a King. At least, he
was a mortal who strove hard to be more than other mortals, and who
strove from a sense of duty. We may--and must--hold the effort futile;
yet we may respect the spirit that prompted it. We Americans have no
use for Kings; and we have ideas as to popular government that King
Wilhelm of Prussia, later Emperor of Germany, would never understand.
But let us consider that it would be well for us if we had a few
statesmen, among those who are governing us on speculation, who would
look on their responsibilities as this dead European monarch did on
his. He knew that his place was greater than he was, and he tried to
make himself fit for it. And, now that he is dead, his people mourn
a brave man gone; if they are to have Kings or Emperors to rule them
in the future, they will go far before they find a better man of his
kind.”--PUCK, _March 21st, 1888_.

[Illustration]




THE EUROPEAN EQUILIBRIST.

_PUCK, March 30th, 1887._


“The anarchists and socialists, and the turbulent and vicious among
our German-American fellow-citizens, were more or less miserable over
the celebration of Kaiser Wilhelm’s ninetieth birthday, last week; but
decent Americans of German origin or free-born may well have taken
pleasure in drinking the old gentleman’s health. No earnest republican
can unreservedly admire even the best of emperors--or, indeed, wholly
understand the imperial idea. But, since there are emperors, it is
desirable that they should be good of their kind; and there is no
kingly ruler in the world to-day who is a better man, after his own
pattern, than the white-haired old soldier who has just ended his
ninetieth year.

“And even the Anarchist who would not drink the old Kaiser’s health
ought to reflect--if an Anarchist can reflect--that he has little
right to complain of the good old Kaiser when he cries out against the
government of Germany. Wilhelm is Emperor, in truth; but in Germany
there is to-day a higher than the Emperor--the Emperor’s humble
servant, the Chancellor of the Empire, a stern, shrewd, stubborn,
overbearing, foxy, sinister, loyal, fearless old man, named Bismarck,
who holds the government of Germany in the hollow of his hand, and is
the one arbiter of peace and war in all Europe. It is this original
and powerful man who practically stands for Germany in her dealings
with other nations; and it is he who to-day holds the balance of power
in Continental Europe. His fame will outlive that of the honest old
Emperor. Kaiser Wilhelm will figure in the school text-books with Henry
the Fourth of France and Elizabeth of England; but Bismarck’s name will
live forever in the literature of politics; and even in fiction as a
type more strong, deep and subtle than any in the annals of statecraft.
We use the name of Machiavelli in familiar comparison--but whom shall
we ever compare with Bismarck?”--PUCK, _March 30th, 1887_.

[Illustration]




FREDERICK III. OF GERMANY--THE END OF A BRAVE LIFE.

_PUCK, June 27th, 1888._


It will be well for Germany if, in the doubtful years that lie ahead of
her, she has not reason to regret the loss of the brave and high-minded
man whose sad reign came to an end two weeks ago. Frederick the
Third inherited his father’s strength and his lofty sense of duty,
yet his character was made at once broader and gentler by his better
understanding of the spirit of his day. He was eminently the man for
the hour, and the courage with which he enunciated his principles and
took his stand for tolerance and modern ideas, under circumstances
which might well have served as an excuse for inaction, showed that he
would not have been unequal to greater emergencies. Had he lived, he
would have made the most of peace, as his father made the most of war,
and his talent complemented that of William, and was singularly fitted
to the duties from which he was so soon taken.

[Illustration]




“SHAKE!”

_PUCK, May 4th, 1887._


“How often all Europe goes into what we slang-loving Americans call a
keniption fit over a political ‘incident!’ We don’t care to attempt an
exact definition of the word ‘keniption;’ but we are quite willing to
explain that an ‘incident,’ in European politics, means a small affair
of great importance. A native peasant pokes his umbrella into a foreign
ambassador’s eye--that is an incident. A foreign ambassador pokes his
umbrella into a native peasant’s eye--that also is an incident. On such
incidents the fate of nations hangs. It may be the Mortara incident, or
the Benedetti incident, or, as it is now, the Schnaebeles or Schnaebele
or Schnaebelé incident, (how does he spell his gallicised German name?)
but no year can pass without its incident, over which the press must
shriek, and diplomats must excite themselves, and quarts of honest ink
and ohms of good electric force must be wasted.

       *       *       *       *       *

“The incident himself--there is generally a personality to the
incident--is, as a rule, a most unimportant individual. There are
exceptional cases, of course. Benedetti was a man of importance. He had
too much importance, mayhap. But he would never have written his name
in large script upon history’s page had he not been snubbed in a public
park. So is it with Schnaebeles. He is world-famous to-day, who will
never do anything else in his life that will get his name in American
or English newspapers. He has been arrested by Germany, he, a French
official, and he is an incident. He is an incident who does not amount
to much, it seems; but still he is an incident. Twenty, thirty, forty
years from now, a withered, snuffy, oddly dressed old man will sit,
perchance, in front of some Paris café, sipping his eau sucrée or his
syruped vermouth, and the boulevardier who passes by will say to his
friend; ‘That is Schnaebele.’

“‘And who is Schnaebele?’ the friend will inquire, wonderingly.

“‘Why, have you forgotten your history? The hero of the Schnaebele
incident--in 1887--or ’78--which was it? When we were so near going to
war with Germany.’

“‘Ah, bah!’ his friend will reply; ‘un marron glacé! Qu’est-ce que tu
me donnes!’

“And that is what it is to be an incident.”--PUCK, _May 4th, 1887_.

[Illustration]




THE SITUATION IN GERMANY.

_PUCK, February 2nd, 1887._


Elsewhere in these pages an attempt has been made to give some idea of
the character and significance of “German Michel.” This cartoon, which
appeared at the time of the Boulangist excitement in France, shows how
Michel’s native shrewdness and stolidity rendered him proof against
the ingenious, but far from ingenuous, attempts of Prince Bismarck to
make capital for the War Department out of the disturbances in France.
The sturdy toiler, overworked and overtaxed already, showed not only
a frank unwillingness to add to his burdens, but bore himself toward
the princes and potentates that were set above him with a certain
self-confident freedom of attitude which had not been his wont of old
time.

[Illustration]




GOOD GRACIOUS!

_PUCK, March 19th, 1890._


“‘German Michel’ is a typical figure of which the most remarkable
characteristic is that it has made itself absolutely inappropriate
to its original purposes. It is a figure created by the German
caricaturists--a loutish, sleepy, heavy peasant, gazing on the world
with dull, uninterested eyes. It stood for the political spirit of
the German people--the spirit that existed in the years between ’48
and ’70--the spirit of indifferentism, of hopeless submission to
superior power, of acceptance of whatever state of affairs it might
please the rulers of the land to establish. It was aptly chosen. Even
the possibilities of brute force suggested by the bumpkin’s sturdy
build had a deeply significant application.... But 1870 and the war
changed the spiritual state of Germany, or rather, began a process of
change of which we have not yet seen the end. And now for twenty years
the German government has been educating Michel, and Michel has been
educating himself. While the government has been teaching him to read,
and he has been teaching himself various things that are useful and
interesting to any good citizen and patriot, there have been plenty of
people who have devoted themselves to giving him what might be called
an underground education. Recent events in Germany show that this part
of Michel’s education has certainly not been neglected--at least, so
far as the inculcation of the beauties of socialism is concerned....
Now it is to this Michel, not to the old Michel, to the public spirit
of Germany of 1850 or 1860, that the young Emperor Wilhelm is issuing
his extraordinary ‘rescripts,’ in which he describes himself as the
emissary of God, sent to take charge of the future of the German nation
(without specifying any qualifications for the task with which the
Almighty may have been pleased to endow him); announces his intention
of solving at once the everlasting problem of poverty and ignorance,
and offers to ‘shatter’ or ‘dash in pieces,’ all who oppose him in
his plans. Surely, this young man, this inexperienced youth, the son
of an Emperor who reigned only on his death-bed, the grandson of an
Emperor whose best work was done before that grandson had got well used
to long breeches; this immature martinet; this quaint despot with the
narrow forehead and the eager, intolerant face--surely he is ill-fitted
to meet the subtle, secret-minded men, conscious of their growing
strength, who have taken the place of the submissive ‘Michels’ of his
grandfather’s time.”--PUCK, _March 19th, 1890_.

[Illustration]




HE BEATS BARNUM.

_PUCK, February 19th, 1890._


This is neither the place nor the time to attempt any summing up of the
character of the Rev. Dr. Talmage, of Brooklyn. In PUCK’S earlier days
the eccentricities of this clergyman and his peculiar notoriety made
him the especial butt of the cartoonist; and this latter revival of a
familiar figure was provoked by some uncommonly audacious performance
whereby the Reverend gentleman startled most people and shocked many
on his return from a European trip. It is unnecessary to recall the
details: the cartoon is founded on Dr. Talmage’s own utterances.

Let us note here that through all this long period of fun-making, Dr.
Talmage seems to have enjoyed the jokes upon himself even more than
the general public did, and PUCK has for many years preserved a formal
blessing or benediction, couched in terms of cordial regard, and sent
by the clergyman in exchange for a small cash and a large advertising
contribution to the re-construction of his tabernacle.

[Illustration]




THE MURDERER’S STRAIGHT ROUTE TO HEAVEN.--BRINGING RELIGION INTO
DISREPUTE.

_PUCK, June 28th, 1882._


Many who look at this cartoon to-day may well wonder what called it
forth, and many others may have to be reminded that even so recently
as ten years ago a morbid sympathy with criminals was so common among
American clergymen that it was popularly held a reproach to the whole
clerical body. It was, however, little more than a passing phase, a
sort of hysterical epidemic that prevailed among people peculiarly
exposed to emotional impulses. It seems to have died a natural death,
and it has passed away so utterly that it is practically forgotten
to-day.

We do not speak, of course, of the sympathy which every minister of
God should feel for the erring and unfortunate, but of a certain
maudlin enthusiasm which at one time moved many otherwise excellent and
admirable members of the clerical profession, and brought about some
startling exhibitions of misplaced sentiment. At the period of which
we speak, namely: the decade prior to the publication of this cartoon,
it was no uncommon thing to read of a clergyman, assisted by a band of
female devotees, invading a prison to spend hours, day after day, in
consoling, comforting, and generally coddling some red-handed murderer
in whom they could have had no possible interest, and of whom they
never would have heard save for the notoriety of his trial. Clergymen
were found, too, to go on the gallows at the last moment, and publicly
to avow their belief that the soul of the criminal about to die was
purged of all earthly sin, and that his repentance with the noose
around his neck had fully sufficed to fit him for heaven. Such shows as
these were common enough and evil enough in their influence to justify
even severer condemnation than that expressed in this vigorous cartoon.

The mania, for such we must call it, probably had its origin in the
extravagant and widely advertised efforts of the Rev. Dr. Tyng, of New
York, to save Foster, the “Carhook Murderer,” from the gallows. Foster,
who was partially drunk at the time, wantonly killed an inoffensive
stranger on the 26th of April, 1871; and, after every legal resource
had been exhausted in his behalf, was hanged March 21st, 1873.

This cartoon appeared in PUCK of June 28th, 1882, and its immediate
occasion was the execution of Charles Guiteau for the assassination of
President Garfield, which created a most unwholesome excitement in many
quarters.

[Illustration]




“PROHIBITION IS COMING!”

_PUCK, August 4th, 1886._


“The State of Rhode Island has recently passed--to its own great
surprise--a ‘prohibition law.’ The state did not really want the
law. It was not passed as a matter of principle. The Republicans
voted for the law to spite the Democrats; the Democrats to spite the
Republicans. No one thought that the aggregate of votes thus cast would
make the legal majority. But so it happened. Now, the State of Rhode
Island is a small community, and, like most small communities, it is
narrow, ignorant, and, save in things material, unproductive. One of
the chief sources of revenue upon which it depends is its wonderful
collection of Summer watering-places, which bring travel and traffic
to the state and put many thousands of dollars into circulation every
year. These places are supported by a civilized lot of people from the
great cities--people who are accustomed to drinking wine and beer and
whatever else they fancy; and, as a rule, in moderation. If they find
that the new law interferes with their perfectly legitimate customs in
this regard, they will leave Rhode Island for some more liberal and
sensible state; and Rhode Island will be so much the poorer, and so
much the wiser. No decent man will submit to be put in the category of
criminals because a few hysterical women and unbalanced men think that
the use of alcohol is as much a crime as its abuse.”--PUCK, _August
4th, 1886_.

[Illustration]




FIRST ANNUAL PICNIC OF THE “KNIGHTS OF LABOR”--MORE FUN FOR THE
SPECTATORS THAN FOR THE PERFORMERS.

_PUCK, June 21st, 1882._


The cartoon suggested by the “First Annual Picnic of the Knights
of Labor” can hardly be said to belong to PUCK’S famous group of
labor cartoons. Its appearance preceded by some four years the great
discussion of the labor question; and it is essentially what is known
to artists as a “situation” picture, aiming at nothing more than
the simple presentation of a fact. But it is curious to note that
it was called forth by the futile strikes in the iron mill region,
and even at that early date the editorial comments accompanying the
cartoon ascribed the anomalous condition of affairs principally to
the inequalities of fortune engendered by the protective system. The
comments close thus: “It is not extravagant wages that the workman
wants, it is purchasing power with the wages he does earn.”

[Illustration]




ARBITRATION IS THE TRUE BALANCE OF POWER.

_PUCK, March 17th, 1886._


It should be distinctly stated that this cartoon is not to be regarded
as having a general or abstract application. It appeared during the
first street-railway strikes in New York; and the lesson it tries to
teach was addressed especially to the corporations which, acting as
common carriers and holding valuable franchises, were putting the
public to great loss and inconvenience in carrying on a protracted
struggle with their employees, wherein there was little doubt that
right and justice were entirely on the workmen’s side.

However, this was the beginning of the great labor struggle that did
so much to clear the minds of the people on the great question of
the inter-relation of Capital and Labor. PUCK’S forecast was almost
prophetic. The editorial, which rebukes the greed of the corporations,
points out that the strikes which they had precipitated could only
serve to teach the workmen to abuse the right to strike; and goes on
to say: “They are not more wise, more temperate, more just than their
employers. The employers, having power, have misused it. They will
likewise misuse power. What could be expected otherwise? Where they
have the upper hand, they will tyrannize. They will strike and paralyze
business, not only to enforce just demands, but to enforce unjust
demands. Their employers will use the power of money to retaliate as
best they may. A war, a veritable Civil War is begun, to which who can
see the end?”

[Illustration]




“FOR WHATSOEVER A MAN SOWETH, THAT SHALL HE ALSO REAP.”

_PUCK, June 15th, 1887._


Incredible as it may seem, the hare-brained theories of Mr. Henry
George as to the communistic ownership of land received at one time a
most unmerited toleration from people who would not have been suspected
of sympathy with such vagaries. That he and his partner McGlynn did not
accomplish the mischief they set out to do was no fault of theirs. When
this cartoon was drawn, June 15th, 1887, they seemed to be perilously
near to attaining their end. The reason that they failed was that,
as is usual in this country, Horse Sense ultimately triumphed over
Hysteria.

[Illustration]




THE POVERTY PROBLEM SOLVED.

_PUCK, May 18th, 1887._


Mr. Henry George no doubt found his account in catering to the unruly
and turbulent in 1887, but it is doubtful if Father McGlynn, the Roman
Catholic Priest who got such a bad attack of the George doctrine that
he earned for himself several years of suspension from his priestly
functions, made as much out of it as his more astute colleague. But
between them they made a great deal of noise, and PUCK did what he
could to counteract their influence. With this cartoon on May 18th,
1887, appeared the following editorial advice to the laboring man:

“Don’t be a laboring man--that is, labor, but as an employer rather
than as an employee. You have got to serve your apprenticeship to
poverty--so has everybody else, except the comparatively few who
inherit large fortunes. But be diligent in your apprenticeship, and it
will be mastership in the end. Work with this one idea in view--that
some day you will have earned and saved enough to go into business for
yourself. Then you can employ some other poor man, who would else go
hungry; and you can treat him well and give him a chance to make money
in his turn. That is the way of the world. It is not a bad way, if you
take it bravely and cheerfully. If you refuse to take it in the right
spirit, if you sulk and whine and call upon labor organizations to
protect you, and cry for special legislation to right wrongs which you
can’t even define--why, you will find it a pretty hard way. It is hard
on shirks, idlers, skulkers, and men who do half-hearted work. But it
is a way that is as old as the rising of the sun; a way that will be
the same when the last sun sets on this world, and all the McGlynns
and Georges and Anti-Poverty Clubs in creation will not change it. It
is the good old way of duty, and it existed before Labor Leagues were
thought of.”

[Illustration]




BETWEEN SLAVERY AND STARVATION.

_PUCK, October 26th, 1887._


To realize the terrible truth of this picture, it is necessary to
remember that trades-union tyranny cuts both ways. At a little earlier
date PUCK explained the situation thus:

“We read in the papers that such and such a body of working-men has
struck for higher wages, by command of such and such a union. Popular
sympathy is at once aroused in behalf of the underpaid laborer and
the benevolent union that has taken charge of his interests. But the
public does not know that the union which orders that the workman’s pay
shall be so high also orders that it shall be _no higher_. When the
union says to the employer: ‘You shall pay this man two dollars a day,’
it likewise says to the man: ‘You shall not receive _more_ than two
dollars a day. If you take ten cents more of your employer, every man
in the place must receive a proportionate increase in his wages, or you
must give the ten cents back. If you do not obey us, we will fine you.
If you will not pay the fine, we will turn you out of the union. We
will not let you work in any office where there are union men. If you
get work in a non-union shop, we will boycott you, we will boycott your
fellow working-men, we will boycott your employers, we will boycott
every man who sells you food or gives you lodging.’”

[Illustration]




THE SUCKERS OF THE WORKING-MAN’S SUSTENANCE.

_PUCK, May 19th, 1886._


The labor struggle of 1886 was not far advanced before the agency of
the professional agitator became apparent--to those, at least, who
honestly tried to look below the surface of things. That the whole
fight was got up and kept up by these false friends of the laboring
man, and that they were the only gainers by the disorder of the time
is well known now. But it was not so well known then, and when this
cartoon was put forth it had all the interest that attaches to the bold
presentation of a truth for which the public is not prepared.

“The Suckers of the Working-man’s Sustenance” was published in PUCK of
May 19th, 1886. The three bearded men under the table have features
which more or less suggest those of certain professional agitators of
the hour--John Most, the editor of a dirty little paper that preached
blood-and-thunder anarchy, and a couple of other scamps of the same
sort.

[Illustration]




THE MEPHISTOPHELES OF TO-DAY--HONEST LABOR’S TEMPTATION.

_PUCK, October 20th, 1886._


The part that Mr. Henry George played in the troublous days of 1886
was probably profitable to himself, and to no one else. He started in
with a reputation of a sincere and high-minded philosopher somewhat in
advance of his time, but the moment he got the Socialist nomination for
Mayor of New York, he turned into as frank and downright a demagogue as
ever tried to tempt a mob with promise of the pillage of the rich.

“We are sincerely pleased to see that Mr. Henry George has come
out frankly and made his canvass on the basis of an out-and-out
alliance with the Anarchists. He no longer pretends to belong among
the respectable reformers; he arrays his followers squarely and
honestly against the law and the established order of things. He was
a sanguine theorist so long as he kept at book-making. Now that he
has taken to talking, he is a thorough-going, zealous demagogue of
the old-fashioned sort. ‘Vote for me,’ he cries to the lawless, the
idle and the improvident, ‘and I will give you free rides and free
land; and the police shall be muzzled, and all laws that you do not
like shall be repealed. A contract shall no longer be sacred, and if
any man has wealth, he shall share it with you. The land of the rich
shall be confiscated, and you may boycott to your hearts’ content.’ It
may be doubted whether this is the right way to win favor with decent
citizens; but it is Mr. George’s way of going to work.”

[Illustration]




THE BIG BOYCOTT WINDBAG.

_PUCK, April 28th, 1886._


The series of cartoons on the labor question which Mr. Keppler
contributed to PUCK during the years of 1886 and 1887 certainly
attracted more attention, and probably did more to influence public
opinion than any series of pictures that ever appeared in the paper.
They were drawn at a time of great public excitement, when fools,
fanatics and unprincipled adventurers were tempting honest laboring-men
into all manner of lawlessness and improper use of physical force. The
American public had for the first time been introduced to that ugly
thing, the “Boycott,” and the Anarchists were seizing the opportunity
afforded by the general agitation to spread their infernal doctrines
among the working-men. Of course, under such circumstances, the air was
full of the hysterical shrieks of the excitable people who thought that
all law and order were to vanish from the face of the earth. The value
of these clear and direct pictorial expositions was great indeed, in
that time of trouble, doubt and perplexity.

PUCK said of Trades-Union tyranny on April 28th, 1886: “The boycott
business is bad. But it is an extravagant, monstrous, impossible thing,
that the laws of a free country must crush out, sooner or later.
This other evil flourishes in secret and strikes at the laborer’s
self-respect. It is part of such a tyranny as no employer or body of
employers ever dared to dream of establishing. Every working-man who
wants to do something, to be something in the world--something better
than the spy-ridden slave of a secret society--should rise up to fight
it. There is no need of general organization for this purpose. Wherever
one brave man, or a handful of brave men, stands boldly up and insists
on every man’s natural right to make his own price for his labor, to
sell it for what he chooses to sell it for, a blow will be struck in
the cause of the laboring man’s independence. And it rests with the
laboring man to work out his own salvation.”

[Illustration]




IN THE CLUTCHES OF THE MONSTER.

_PUCK, May 28th, 1890._


Of all the disreputable schemes for illicit money-making that ever
flourished in this country, the Louisiana lottery is probably the most
iniquitous and inexcusable. No agency of modern times has done more to
send boys to the devil, to tempt unprotected women into squandering
their subsistence, and to lure decent men from their daily duty by the
temptation of illegitimate gain. At the best, every public lottery
is a danger to the community; but of all public lotteries of modern
times, the Louisiana lottery is easily the worst and most dangerous.
At no time has it enjoyed the reputation of being even what is known
as a square gambling game. An honest lottery--that is, a lottery
honestly conducted--may be profitable to the people who get it up.
But the Louisiana lottery has never earned the name of being honestly
conducted in any respect. Its only claim to respectability--and it
is the thinnest sort of a claim--has lain in its employment of two
ex-confederate officers, General Jubal T. Early and General P. G. T.
Beauregard as the overseers of its drawings. The fact that they were
ex-officers of the confederate army alone gave these men a right to
consideration. Personally, such adventurers could be bought by the
pound, like a side of pork, for any purpose.

This cartoon appeared at a time when the state of Louisiana was making
a vigorous attempt to rid itself of this hideous disgrace. The attempt
was but partially successful. Dauphin, the original agent of this
infamous concern, is dead, but his successors’ advertisement is still
to be found in certain public prints where everybody can see it, except
the United States District Attorney.

[Illustration]




THE OPENING OF THE CONGRESSIONAL SESSION.

_PUCK, December 7th, 1887._


There is a marvelous pregnancy of significance in this cartoon; as we
can not but see when we think that, at the re-assembling of Congress
in December, 1887, one of the first questions it had to confront was
the question of the Surplus. The revenues of the government, especially
those coming from customs duties, were so vast that an enormous,
useless, cumbersome and dangerous surplus was steadily piling itself
up in the United States Treasury. It was the expectation of the people
that Congress would pass laws reducing the customs duties. But the
only tariff legislation made by Congress between that date and the
appearance of this book has tended to increase rather than to lower
these duties. And yet, as these pages go to press, the latest report of
the Secretary of the Treasury announces that this surplus is so nearly
wiped out that, unless the new administration takes measures to the
contrary, there will be a deficit within a year. This is a curious,
definitive accounting of a four years’ test of a peculiar latter-day
theory of political economy. It is not wonderful that a practical
people insisted on the abandonment of the experiment.

[Illustration]




RESTLESS NIGHTS.

_PUCK, March 16th, 1887._


That Mr. Cleveland during his first term was the object of more
newspaper criticism than a President usually receives was due to a
combination of circumstances. He was the first Democratic President
elected in a quarter of a century; he was elected in part by Republican
or Independent votes, and he had incurred the enmity of a faction of
his own party. Nor were his ideas of the duties and responsibilities of
government calculated to please a certain numerous and noisy class of
Democratic politicians who were “out for the spoils.” On March 16th,
1887, PUCK commented thus upon the situation:

“It is pretty hard for a practical politician and a strict party-man
to toil away, day after day, editing a great paper and moulding public
opinion at two or three cents per daily mould, and to see public
opinion doing its own moulding all the time, in just the way it should
not. It is disheartening--it is hard on a truly great editor. And yet
to such misery are some of our most prominent moulders subjected.
They toil unceasingly to show to President Cleveland the error of
his ways--giving the public an incidental glimpse--and the more they
show it to him, the less he sees it--and the less the public sees it.
He goes on and does his work as he promised to do it, and the public
seems to be thoroughly well pleased with him. But it is hard on the
moulders.”

[Illustration]




NAPOLEON’S RETREAT.

_PUCK, November 19th, 1890._


Subsequent events have proved that there was no mistake made in
attributing the Republican defeat of 1890 to the effect of the McKinley
Bill. PUCK of November 19th, in enumerating various possible causes for
the turn-over, says to the Republicans: “Do not distress yourselves to
decide which sort of cake gave you the stomach-ache. You have eaten all
the sorts that there were. Any one would have been enough.” Further,
the editorial tells the leaders of the defeated party that they have
passed “a bill, the like of which could not be drawn up elsewhere,
unless it were in Bedlam, than in the Fifty-first Congress. It is
called the McKinley Bill; but it ought to be called ‘A Bill to Raise
Prices and to Make Life Harder for Everybody except a Few Prosperous
Manufacturers.’ So mad a production was this bill that it actually put
a tariff tax on tin-plates--something that every man, woman and child
uses--not because any tin-plates are made in this country, but because
some day, some man, somewhere, might wish to think of making them! And
on top of all that, to add gratuitous insult to wanton injury, you
raise the price of tobacco, so that every man can have a daily reminder
that you don’t care how hard you make life for him. Do you think of
anything calculated to irritate and enrage the citizen which you have
forgotten to treat him to? Do you wonder that you will sit in the next
House with a total representation hardly more than half the size of
the Democrats’ clear majority? Nobody else wonders. If the Democrats,
after they have been long in power, become half as arrogant, selfish
and neglectful of duty as you became, they will be turned out of their
places, too, if the people have to fill their seats with Farmers’
Alliance candidates.”

[Illustration]




THEY HATE THE LIGHT, BUT THEY CAN’T ESCAPE IT.

_PUCK, March 26th, 1890._


The Senate of the United States has been called the pleasantest club in
the country, and perhaps it is. It is certainly a very pleasant club,
and it is not unfair to say that very large entrance fees have been
collected in certain State legislatures from gentlemen whose wealth
constituted their only claim to be admitted to it. But, in view of
the fact that the people of the United States pay the members of this
delightful club reasonably generous salaries for belonging to it, it
may be questioned whether it does not exceed its privileges in keeping
up its indulgence in what are known as “Executive Sessions.” There
was a time in the dim and distant past when Executive Sessions were
rarely secret, and had some excuse in reason and common-sense. But it
is many years now since there has been an Executive Session that was
not promptly and fully reported in every paper that would give space
to its generally unimportant doings. It is, no doubt, a pleasant thing
for a Senator to have the doors of the Senate-Chamber closed, and to
smoke his cigar in lazy comfort while the reading clerk monotonously
and perfunctorily, but as unobtrusively as possible, drones through
the thousand and one articles of the treaty to which the law-maker is
supposed to be giving his statesman-like attention in spite of the
fact that its acceptance or rejection has been decided upon in party
caucus weeks or months before. But the people of the United States pay
the Senator, and the people of the United States built the gallery in
the Senate Chamber, and they really have a right to sit there at all
times during his business hours. It is a right that they will sooner or
later insist upon. We do not know, however, that there is any serious
objection to letting the Senator smoke while they look at him.

[Illustration]




PUCK’S SAMPLE SPEAKERS OF THE PARTY OF MORAL IDEAS.

_PUCK, March 5th, 1890._


It is a curious fact, to which PUCK has called attention more
than once, that the important post of Speaker of the House of
Representatives has been peculiarly unlucky for members of the
Republican party. Between 1863 and 1890, when this cartoon appeared,
four Republicans and three Democrats had occupied the chair. The three
Democrats, Michael C. Kerr, Samuel J. Randall and John G. Carlisle,
were all men of unblemished reputation, popular in their party and well
liked and thoroughly respected on the other side of the House. They all
performed their duties creditably, and retired with honor. But to the
four Republicans it proved to be a position fraught with misfortune.
The first, Schuyler Colfax, was forced into retirement by the discovery
of his connection with the terrible Crédit Mobilier iniquity. The
second Republican speaker was Mr. Blaine, and it was while he was in
the chair that he became involved in the Little Rock and Fort Smith
transaction, which, more than anything else, caused his defeat for
the Presidency in 1884. The next Republican speaker was Mr. John W.
Keifer--but it is really unfair and insulting to the Republican party
to call Keifer a Republican. Of Keifer the best thing that can be said
is that he was an accident and that he did not happen again. The fourth
speaker of the Republican party was Mr. Thomas B. Reed, a gentleman of
fine parts and high character, who was misled by his natural strength
of will into adopting a policy of tyrannical unfairness toward his
political opponents, which earned for him the nick-name of “Czar Reed,”
and probably contributed largely to the revulsion of feeling which
produced the famous “turn-over” of November, 1890.

[Illustration]




CONSISTENCY.

_PUCK, January 21st, 1891._


The talk of the hour often renders editorial comment unnecessary at
the time a cartoon is published, though its republication may make
it necessary to accompany it with a word or two of elucidation. It
seems proper to say that this picture is not meant for an outright
arraignment of the Indian policy of our government, but as a reminder
that there was no consistency in lavishing money and care upon foreign
objects while far more pressing necessities much nearer home fail to
receive proper attention. There is no doubt that for a long time our
Indian Agencies have stood in need of a thorough overhauling; and our
neglect in this matter was emphasized at the time of the publication
of this cartoon, (January 21st, 1891,) by the extraordinary activity
of the philanthropists who sought to express their sympathy with
famine-stricken Russia by making Uncle Sam go down into his pocket for
a relief-fund.

[Illustration]




IT ISN’T THE COWL THAT MAKES THE MONK.

_PUCK, August 28th, 1889._


The first attempt of the Tammany Hall organization to swing into line
with the national democracy, and to put municipal government in New
York on a business-like basis, was received with a general incredulity
that was natural enough under the circumstances. In a sense it was
a most unfortunate thing that Tammany’s sincerity in the purpose
of self-improvement was not more readily recognized by those whose
opposition to Tammany rule was based on a broad-minded and reasonable
distrust of factional control of party power. When Tammany Hall began
to expel objectionable members and to put only able and trustworthy men
in charge of public affairs, that powerful organization removed what
had hitherto been the chief reproach against it. Yet the corruption and
inefficiency which had characterized Tammany’s management in the past
were but an accident of factional rule and not an organic element. This
most obvious objection to the Tammany organization being removed, the
average citizen was quite willing to accept the idea of Tammany Hall’s
supremacy without reflecting at all upon the danger of allowing a part
of a party to substitute its will for that of the majority.

Unhappily--if government by faction is a dangerous and objectionable
scheme, as PUCK has always contended--the most earnest and conspicuous
opponents of Tammany Hall were rather theorists than practical folk.
They were not in touch with the people, and had little knowledge of
plain work-a-day life. In the common phrase, they meant well, but they
didn’t know. In the face of a most striking and remarkable advance in
efficient and economical municipal government they continued their
fight against Tammany on the same lines upon which they had begun it
years before, when the organization was undoubtedly open to the charge
of gross malfeasance in office. This was a mistake, tactically--that
it was also a mistake, practically, time may show. Tammany had little
difficulty in showing that, whatever she might have done in the past,
she had now taken to governing New York uncommonly well and uncommonly
cheaply. That was enough to satisfy the minds of most citizens as to
the advisability of renewing the contract with Tammany; and in 1890 and
in 1892 Tammany riveted her rule upon New York as tight as a collar
on a steamboat shaft. No matter what that rule may be, good, bad or
indifferent, it is factional rule, and as such, to PUCK’S thinking,
dangerous and founded on injustice. If it ever brings mischief to
New York, we must not forget that the responsibility lies with the
theorists who made opposition hopeless by persistently conducting it
upon untenable grounds.

[Illustration]




THE RAVEN.

_PUCK, August 13th, 1890._


President Garfield had the opportunity of choosing for his Secretary
of State the man who, in the national convention, had worked hard and
almost successfully to secure the nomination of another candidate.
But Mr. Garfield declined Mr. Conkling’s assistance, and lived to see
his course receive the emphatic approval of his party. He chose for
his “next friend” Mr. James G. Blaine, with whom he was entirely in
accord, although Mr. Blaine had for many years been a candidate for
the nomination. Four years later Mr. Blaine got the nomination and
was defeated at the polls. Four years after that, again Mr. Blaine
yielded the nomination to Mr. Harrison; and, when Mr. Harrison was
elected, became Secretary of State. Mr. Blaine made no pretence of
personal regard for Mr. Harrison or of devotion to his interests;
in fact, during the last two years of Mr. Harrison’s term of office
the probability of Mr. Blaine’s opposition in the next national
convention was a constant menace to Mr. Harrison, who earnestly desired
a re-nomination. Mr. Blaine’s health, however, was far from good;
and he delayed putting himself forward as a candidate until it was
entirely too late to obtain the support which he might normally have
counted upon. The cartoon shows Mr. Blaine in the gloomy and depressing
character of Poe’s “Raven,” croaking unfriendly discouragement to Mr.
Harrison’s fond dreams of future success. In a rough parody of the
famous poem, PUCK, on August 13th, 1890, represented President Harrison
as saying of the Blaine raven “perched above his chamber door:”

        “Then this ebony bird beguiling
      My sad fancy into smiling,
    By its manner strange suggesting
        Little Rock and Arkan_sor_,
      ‘Though thy plumes are not Elysian,’
      Said I, ‘tell me with precision,
      Art a jimblaine or a vision?
        Art thou here for peace or war?
    Tell me, is it peace between us?
      Shall an end be made of war?’
        Quoth the Raven, ‘Nevermore!’

      “Much I marveled this confounded
      Fowl the question thus propounded
    With veracity to answer--
        Which was not his wont of yore.
      ‘But,’ I thought, ‘he is but thinking
      Of his own hopes, shipwrecked, sinking,
      As he sits there, blankly blinking,
        Dreaming still of ’84,
    Dreaming of his matchless tumble,
      In the year of ’84--’
        Quoth the Raven, ‘Nevermore!’

      “‘Prophet!’ said I, ‘thing of evil!
      Prophet, if you are a _dee_vil--
    Whether Reed gets left, or whether
        Poor McKinley goes ashore--
      Tell me, am I Fate’s selection
      For a glorious re-election--
      Shall I join a freak collection--
        Shall I serve my first term o’er--
    _Must_ I go to Injinap’lis?
        Can’t I tide two termlets o’er?’
          Quoth the Raven, ‘Nevermore!’”

[Illustration]




THE WAR OF THE OPERAS.

    Italian Opera will succeed German at the Metropolitan.

                    --_Daily Papers._

_PUCK, February 11th, 1891._


DIE GÖTTERDÄMMERUNG.

TENOR.

    Juchheia! Hoja! Tuba! Toobahd!
    Geh’ ich. Ich gehe. Gingend’weise geh’ ich!
    Italienische Nonsensikalische
    Knocken mich aus.
    Alles is up mit true music.
    Of Donizetti the day dawns.
    Wagner has waggled his wag.
    Vogner has voggled his vog.

CHORUS.

  Juchheia! Hoja!

              Ahdehr![A]
              Stehdehr!
              Muhvahn!

  _Orchestra_      _Embdy-iss-der-Gradle motif._

SOPRANO.

    But for the baseborn barbarians,
    Tinkling triumphantly tunes,
    Scornfullest scorn,
    Spurnfullest spurning is ours.

  _Orchestra_      _Gondempt motif._

CONTRALTO.

    Look at the long-haired loon!
    Limp is his ten-pound libretto!
    Time with his foot beats he no longer!
    Howling his hisses
    Louder than laughterful boxes!
    Homeless is he! Hoja! Where shall he go?

VOICE OF THE MOUNTAIN GUMBOIL.

  What’s the bacillus on Bloomingdale?

  _Orchestra_      _Daemd-outraitch motif._

BASSO PROFUNDO.

    Who has a Weinhandlung handy?
    Moozeek is dead.

[_Dead motif._]

    Who has a Weinhandlung to sell?
    Moozeek is dead.

[_Deader motif._]

    Not too far from Dairt’ Ayvennoo!
    Moozeek is dead.

[_Slightly-decomposed motif._]

    Vogner has voggled his vog.

CHORUS.

    Vait till the vind of the Vinter,
    Vistling through Verdi’s viskers,
    Vailfully vails for Vogner,
    Vailing in vain!

TRIONFO DA MONK’.

CHORUS.

    Strewing flow’rs along the way,
    Strewing flow’rs along the way,
        Thus the Duca della Monka-
        Tanka-Shina-Fivacenta
    Comes unto these halls to-day.

THE DUKE. [_recitativo._]

    From these halls a long space of period banished,
    I return like a wanderer,
    To the mansion vacated by the ignoble Teuton.
    Heavens! are these the portraits of my ancestors?
    Ha! vengeance I swear it!
    On this sword!
    By the waists of the ladies I perceive,
    And I observe by the anatomy of the gentlemen,
    The Teuton has desecrated my ancestral domain.

SOPRANO.

    .................
        .................
    .................
        .................
    .................Oh, my heart!
    Oh, my heart! Oh, my heart,
    Oh-oh-oh-oh! my heart! my
                  heart, my hah
                              hah
                                hah
                              hah
                            hah
                          hah
                        hah
                      hah
                    hah
                  hah
                    hah
                      ha-a-a-AHT!!!

CHORUS.

    Let us all
      Happy be!
    Here again
      Once more are we!

THE PUBLIC.

  Two front seats for dollars three!

CURTAIN.

          [A] Tutelary deities of the Nibelungen.

--PUCK, _February 11th, 1891_.

[Illustration]




WITH “HEALTH AND WEALTH AND LUCK TO ALL!” PUCK HAILS HIS READERS GREAT
AND SMALL.

_PUCK, December 5th, 1888._


The necessary ingredients of a Christmas punch are typified in this
cartoon by four female forms. The verses that accompanied it in the
Christmas PUCK for 1888 were as follows:

            “These forms divine
                Must in one combine
    For the Punch that PUCK is preparing--
                      And the dark-eyed form
                            Is the spirit warm,
                        With the wild Bacchante bearing.

            “The sweet-faced fair
                Puts the sugar there,
    Like Charity bland and placid.
                      And Satire’s the jade
                            Who lends lemon aid
                        For a dash of the needful acid.

            “Calm Wisdom, too,
                May water the brew
    To temper, not quench, your laughter--
                      Yet water comes best--
                            With the keenest zest--
                        PUCK thinks, on the morning after.”

[Illustration]




[Illustration: INDEX]


                                                                    Page
  A Harmless Explosion                                                27
  A Humiliating Spectacle                                             67
  A Little Change; or, Politics Makes Strange Bedfellows               3
  A Merry Christmas to All                                            47
  A Midsummer Day’s Dream                                            103
  An Attack on our Outer Ramparts                                     15
  Arbitration is the True Balance of Power                           155
  A Russian Nocturne                                                 107
  “A Sail! A Sail!”                                                   51
  At Last!                                                            95
  Between Slavery and Starvation                                     167
  Blaine Leaving the Capitol--“I Go--But I return”                    79
  Consistency                                                        207
  Consolidated                                                        11
  First Annual Picnic of the “Knights of Labor”                      151
  “For Whatsoever a Man Soweth, that Shall He also Reap”             159
  Frederick III. of Germany--The End of a Brave Life                 123
  Good Gracious!                                                     135
  He Beats Barnum                                                    139
  Helping the Rascals In                                              83
  In Memoriam Emperor William I.                                     115
  In the Clutches of the Monster                                     183
  It isn’t the Cowl that Makes the Monk                              211
  Just the Difference                                                 43
  Let us have Peace, now a President’s Elected                        59
  Napoleon’s Retreat                                                 195
  On the Road                                                         63
  Opening a Little Campaign all by Himself                            75
  Positively Last Awakening of the Democratic Rip Van Winkle          39
  “Prohibition is Coming!”                                           147
  Puck’s Political Hunting Ground                                     31
  Puck’s Sample Speakers of Moral Ideas                              203
  Quality Counts                                                      87
  Restless Nights                                                    191
  Samuel J. Tilden                                                    55
  “Shake!”                                                           127
  Siegfried, The Fearless, In the Political Dismal Swamp              99
  The Big Boycott Wind-bag                                           179
  The Carol of the “Waits”                                            91
  The Cinderella of the Republican Party and her Haughty Sisters      23
  The Democ-rats Caught in the Presidential Trap                       7
  The European Equilibrist                                           119
  The Mephistopheles of To-day--Honest Labor’s Temptation            175
  The Murderer’s Straight Route to Heaven                            143
  The Opening of the Congressional Session                           187
  The Political “Army of Salvation”                                   19
  The Poverty Problem Solved                                         163
  The Raven                                                          215
  The Reign of Peace.--The Mouse is Safe While the Moon Shines       111
  The Situation in Germany                                           131
  The Suckers of the Working-man’s Sustenance                        171
  The Universal Church of the Future                                  35
  The War of the Operas                                              219
  They hate the Light, but They can’t Escape it                      199
  Uncle Sam’s Lodging House                                           71
  With “Health and Wealth and Luck to All!”                          223

[Illustration: Finis]




Transcriber’s Notes


Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling inconsistencies were were not
changed by Transcriber.

Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation
marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left
unbalanced.

On the Title page, the copy number “92” was hand-written.

You can see the cartoons in the HTML version of this eBook at Project
Gutenberg (http://www.gutenberg.org).







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