"Caught!"

The caption reads simply CAUGHT! — and the joke is domestic and warm rather than political. A rotund Santa Claus in his characteristic fur-trimmed suit, wreath of holly on his head, holds a small toy locomotive in one hand while a young child in a nightgown leans over the iron rail of a crib to throw both arms around his neck. Santa has been surprised mid-delivery. By 1889 Nast had spent three decades codifying this figure — the rosy, barrel-shaped Saint Nicholas first sketched for Harper's Weekly in 1863 — and here he reprises him in pure sentiment, free of the partisan edge that drove his Tammany Hall exposés. The image belongs to the gentler half of Nast's career, when the Santa archetype he invented had become cultural property.