Puck July the Fourth 1903

Louis M. Glackens's cover for Puck No. 1374 stages a boisterous Fourth of July as colonial pageant. At center, a stout, red-nosed old man in tricorn hat and blue-and-gold coat—a stock Ben Franklin type—recoils dramatically as a brass cannon fires, his cane flying loose. A young woman in a lavender dress and broad hat clutches her ears in delighted alarm; a grinning young man in a vest touches the cannon's breech. Behind them, a crowd in period dress spills out past a sign reading The Gen. Washington Hotel. The caption banner reads July the Fourth 1903, flanked by firecrackers. The image carries no overt political argument; it is a fond, broadly drawn celebration of patriotic nostalgia, typical of Puck's holiday covers that sold American festivity back to a middle-class readership at ten cents a copy.