The Return of the "Prodigal Father" to the "Puck" Office — Drawn by Himself

Joseph Ferdinand Keppler, Puck's co-founder and chief cartoonist, caricatures his own return from a European vacation in this self-deprecating office comedy. He staggers in burdened with Frankfurt sausages, Paris wine, Neuchâtel cheese, a London umbrella, and a Munich tankard — the souvenirs reading as a gently nationalistic joke about German-American appetites. The jester-figure Puck rushes to embrace him while the Artists' Department disgorges colleagues Gillam, Opper, Gräetz, and Zim, their names paired with Old Masters (Hogarth, Raphael, Apelles) in mock-heroic flattery. A cabinet of caricature busts — Blaine, Grant, Butler, Vanderbilt, Conkling — serves as the magazine's rogues' gallery of political targets, a reminder that satire is the office's actual stock-in-trade. The cartoon's self-referential warmth is typical of Puck's insider humor, celebrating the magazine's own creative community as much as skewering anyone outside it.