Puck Easter 1907

Louis M. Glackens fills this Easter cover with a giant hen—pearl necklace, orange cape, pocket-watch fob, enormous black bonnet trimmed in yellow ribbon—presiding over a clutch of oversized eggs from which fully grown Edwardian adults are hatching. The newborns are dressed for Easter promenade: a man in white tie and top hat bows to a woman in a green dress; a young woman in blue carries a parasol; a boy in a harlequin suit perches jauntily on his shell. Smaller fashionable figures stroll the background. The joke is purely social—Easter Sunday as a mating ritual, the hen as nature's matchmaker launching a new season of courtship. The satire targets Gilded Age vanity and the annual spectacle of conspicuous Easter dress on Fifth Avenue.