A Selection of Cartoons from Puck

Chapter 23: HELPING THE RASCALS IN.

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About This Book

This collection gathers satirical pictorial essays and caricatures originally published in a humor magazine, pairing sharp visual exaggeration with allegorical scenes to comment on political and social issues of the late nineteenth century. An introductory essay explains the artist’s German-influenced approach that fuses caricature and cartooning into dramatic parables, and the plates reproduce large, detailed cartoons with accompanying captions and an index to aid interpretation. The volume emphasizes visual wit, topical parody, and the interplay of character drawing and symbolic narrative.

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.”