Puck, 1878-11-27 · page 5 of 16
Puck — November 27, 1878 — page 5: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This Puck satirical piece mocks the fashionable trend of men carrying ornamental canes in late 19th-century society. The article ridicules several cane styles—the "Bulldog-Cane," "Spring-Chicken variety," and elaborate decorative versions—as pretentious affectations that attract "unscrupulous dangle-rs" (con artists). The cartoons depict absurd scenarios: men using canes to menace others, women carrying umbrellas with animal heads, and fantasies of dogs and cattle organized around a "Bulldog basis," suggesting that adopting this fashion trend could dangerously transform society. The satire critiques how fashion-obsessed elites blindly adopt status symbols, warning that such frivolous trends could destabilize the social order—a common Puck theme mocking upper-class vanity and herd mentality.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
PUCK. FASHION’S FOLLIES. “GM This is the Bulldog-Cane in its simple, form,. of just and excellent: proportions, wonderfully and beautifully made. Occasionally the Bulldog may be ornamented with a squint; but this is according to the taste and fancy of the manufacturer. [37" Zhis is the awful propor- tions it is capable of assuming even in’ a community so highly civilized as our own, ae “ It may be asked: Why should not a man carry such a cane And then the practice is objectionable in other ways. When a man goes to make a call at a private house, it isn’t good taste if he desires? We answer that there are decided disadvantages in his doing to get the family cat into such a state of mind as is shown above. It is not, so. For instance, it is bad in the hydrophobia season, when it acts as a temptation to unscrupulous dog-anglers. Nor do we approve of the Spring-Chicken variety of cane. And what is the use of a woman's carrying around an um- It may make a man look like the cock of the walk; but it gives a brella terminating in a snake's head—unless by way of a reminder lady rather too gallus an air, of a little flirtation her prototype carried on in the Garden of - Eden? ‘There may be some-point, however, in a puppy's sporting a symbolic Black-and-Tan. And have we not good and suffi- cient reason to look for something like this as the Umbrella Stand of the Future? This is a fancy sketch of the potentialities of the immediate future, when the Bulldog Idea shall have become. firmly implanted in the breasts of our fellow-citizens, Society really tuns serious danger of being re-organized on a Bulldog basis. And here is genuine richness in the way of emblematic appur- tenances. comicbooks.com