Puck — March 6, 1878 — page 16: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This Puck page satirizes homelessness and poverty through a character study titled "Our Tramp" (subtitle: "L Degretto Per Esser Felice" - Italian, roughly "The Right to Be Happy"). The sequential panels depict a vagrant's daily existence: he's never hungry (panel 1), gets genteel treatment (2), needs no clean clothes (3), finds shoes by looking (4), spends time in libraries (5), avoids police (6), doesn't worry about valuables (7), and dies peacefully, returning to nature (10). The satire appears to mock both the romanticization of poverty and society's indifference to homelessness. The character's contentment is presented ironically—what society deems "happiness" for the poor is actually deprivation dressed as virtue. Published during WWI-era America, it critiques class inequality and social hypocrisy.