Puck, 1877-11-07 · page 5 of 16
Puck — November 7, 1877 — page 5: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This six-panel comic strip depicts a romantic comedy scenario typical of Puck's humor. A man named Briggs encounters a lady in dense fog, creating confusion and opportunity for misadventure. The sequence shows: Briggs bumping into her (panel 1), apologizing while she rebuffs him (panel 2), offering escort (panel 3), attempting a "gentle hug" under cover of fog (panel 4), stealing a kiss (panel 5), and finally being recognized by her husband, who exclaims with apparent approval (panel 6). The satire plays on Victorian-era social anxieties about public propriety and the fog as cover for impropriety. The husband's seeming acceptance of the kiss suggests commentary on loose moral standards or marital dynamics of the era. The humor relies on the fog enabling behavior that wouldn't be socially acceptable in clear daylight.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
PUCK. LOST IN THE FOG. 1 4. Under cover of fog, Briggs attempts a gentle hug. 5. og stil permitting, a kiss is also in- duiged in. 3. “I'll go for her,” thinks Briggs. She accepts escort. 6. Just then fog clears. Awful recognition. “Good gracious, my husband!” “Dammit, my wife!” Puckerings. BUCKWHEAT CAKE— SHAKE! “TALMAGE apostrophizes the rum-jug,” says the Sun. This accounts for some of Mr. ‘lal- mage’s untrammeled eloquence. But—apos- trophizes—apostrophizes -isn’t that a sort of a fancy name for a familiar uperation ? Oakey Hatt has come back, and alone. This is cruel. Is the faithful companion of his wanderings, the wart two inches below the left ear, to be left to pine and fret its susceptible heart-strings in solitude and neglect, in uncon- genial London, Ir is cold in the fourth floor back hall bed- room of the boarding-house, these nights, and the young man with a flute isn’t so limber and expansive with that instrument as he used to be in the balmy evenings of early June. Rice-PowDER is now made in various tints, to suit the complexion of the wearer. Cronin is having a rich, warm shade of vermillion ground expressly for his most interesting and characteristic feature. In China they drown the superfluous female babies. This causes a marked appreciation in the value of the surviving feminine population, and puts a check on the growth of the hairpin monopoly. Money may be the root of all evil; but we know two or three members of the journalistic profession who don’t seem to find superficiality of soil any hindrance to raising a good square average crop of iniquity. It is not uncommon, just at this time of the year, to meet in the lobby of Wallack’s a ven- erable gentleman from the provinces, who re- marks that New York is greatly changed since he was down here last, in '43; and wants to know where Burton is acting. Exections, Josephus Flavius Cook and ‘Un- der the Gaslight” have struck New York all at onetime. And yet they say this city needs chastening! Tue circus has struck our metropolis, and the local press, so far in advance of the country newspapers, not wishing to become blind wor- shippers of the ladies with the bare-back legs on a pink horse, have spread themselves on learned treatises concerning the origin, pro- gress and developement of the noble sports of the ring, tracing their gay and festive cavortings back to the Greeks and Romans. But none of them have told when that poetic outburst: “Hoopla, here we are again!” first came into use, Tuis is the season when the manager who is devoted to the cause of high art announces his programme for the season, and opens with an emotional comedy from the French. And in about one month, he will revive ‘Uncle Tom's Cabin;” and after that he will play the great historical drama of ‘Ye Sheriff and his Merry Men” for a limited number of nights—number limited to one. comicbooks.com