Puck Christmas Number

The cover of Puck's 1897 Christmas issue presents the magazine's cherubic imp-mascot—drawn here as a barefoot boy in a pink toga—stoking a roaring hearth with a long iron poker. From the flames rises a dense smoke column populated by the caricatured faces of the year's political figures. A log labeled 1897 burns away beneath them, while a stars-and-stripes stocking hangs from the mantel and an American flag leans against the brick chimney. The allegory is direct: Puck incinerates the old year and its cast of rogues, clearing the hearth for 1898. Price: 25 cents.