Puck, 1878-04-17 · page 5 of 16
Puck — April 17, 1878 — page 5: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a sequential comic strip satirizing a postman's delivery of a love letter. The narrative follows a postal worker reading increasingly absurd lines from a letter as he delivers it, his reactions becoming more exaggerated and ridiculous with each excerpt. The humor relies on the contrast between romantic love-letter conventions and the absurd, nonsensical content the postman encounters—including references to specific line numbers (6th line, 14th line, 20th line, etc.) that apparently contain bizarre or inappropriate phrases. The final panel reveals the postman became so disturbed he was admitted to Bloomingdale (likely an asylum), and the author has "carried my eyeballs myself." The satire mocks both overwrought Victorian love letters and postal workers' exposure to ridiculous correspondence.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
PUCK. MY LOVE-LETTER. 1, I deposited it in the lamp-postbox on the 2, Isaw him, attracted by the marvelous beauty I saw him begin to smile. I knew then he was comer, and watched the postman take it out. of the handwriting, take a sly peep at the interior. reading the 3d line, beginning “Barling, I forever—” aah The smile broadened, He had reached the 5. It was evident that he had struck the roth ine. aS Sian: 8. Line 23 appeared to affect him strangely. 10, At the 34th line he positively laughed, 11,_ But at the 37th line he might have been said 12, The postman became a raving idiot at the to guffaw. oth ‘line, and was removed to Bloomingdale. Since then I have carried my epistles myself, P. S—It strikes me that the postman must have considered my love-letter funny. comicbooks.com