Puck, 1877-08-08 · page 5 of 16
Puck — August 8, 1877 — page 5: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a nine-panel comic strip satirizing a character named "Valentine Adolphus" and his relationship troubles. The narrative follows Valentine attempting to court a woman while managing a painful corn (foot ailment). The satire centers on the physical comedy of Valentine's predicament: he tries romantic gestures but is constantly distracted and disabled by his corn condition. In panels 5-9, he attempts increasingly desperate "operations"—trying various tools (knife, file, saw, brashlash, hammer, corkscrew) to remove the corn, resulting in slapstick chaos. The joke plays on the period's obsession with personal grooming and romantic pursuits being thwarted by mundane physical ailments. The title "Love and Corns" juxtaposes romantic aspiration against bodily discomfort—a common theme in Victorian-era humor magazines.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
1. Oh, Valentine Adolphus, what should 2. Valentine Adolphus gives her a hint.— 3. “Delighted to see you, sir, 7 have « I say to Papa if he came in now? “Papa, this is my-- my—chiropodist!” corn—if you will” 4. Valentine Adolphus doesn't “will” — 5. By good luck, he has with him his thirty- but he looks at her and then at him—and two-blade pocket-knife, with a saw, a file, a he must. bradawl, a tack-hammer and a corkscrew in it. 7. He tries twenty-seven different blades, 8. Which results in a sudden change of base 9. ‘The corn is eradicated, but Papa doesn’t the saw, the file and then the bradawl, and on the part of the enemy. feel any better for it. : concludes to polish off the job with the cork- Valentine Adolphus has not resumed his screw, visits. comicbooks.com