Puck's Valentines for 1894

Frederick Opper fills this double-page spread with a ring of political caricatures orbiting a central handshake between Uncle Sam and President Grover Cleveland, with a portrait of deposed Hawaiian Queen Liliuokalani hanging pointedly behind them—commenting on Cleveland's refusal to annex Hawaii. Surrounding vignettes skewer the era's stock villains: McKinley in a Napoleon hat astride a "War Tariff" rocking horse; Tammany boss Croker dwarfing reformer Parkhurst; Senator Peffer and Mary Lease clutching endless "Speech" scrolls; David B. Hill enthroned in an outsized senatorial chair. Opper's ethnic shorthand is period-typical—Irish machine politicians carry exaggerated jowls and simian brows, a routine visual grammar of anti-immigrant nativism in 1890s illustrated press. Each vignette pairs a mocking valentine verse with its target, turning St. Valentine's Day into a ledger of Gilded Age grievances: protective tariffs, Populist windiness, New York machine corruption, and imperial ambition all receive their sardonic cards.