Puck, 1879-05-21 · page 5 of 16
Puck — May 21, 1879 — page 5: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a humorous serial comic strip following an awkward, timid young man over twelve months at a Parisian café. The narrative traces his painstaking courtship: he begins by simply observing a beautiful waitress ("dame de comptoir"), gradually builds courage to glance at her, and eventually—after three years of silent admiration—is approached by the fair maid at dusk. The joke satirizes excessive romantic timidity and hesitation. By the final panels, their relationship culminates in marriage, with the punchline suggesting his wife now "spotted wooden legs"—a darkly humorous twist implying he's trapped or compromised by matrimony after his prolonged indecision. The strip gently mocks both romantic paralysis and male anxiety about courtship.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
PUCK. THE TIMID LOVER. He was young, respectable, timid and nearsighted— __Every evening he went to a French restaurant in One evening—it was in his third year at the café—be ob, so awfully nearsighted. Houston Street, and spelled through the Paris papers, happened to glance up from his modest refreshment, and drank one glass of Boviline. and observed that the dame de comptoir was young, blonde and beautiful. Boldly determining to overcome his bashfulness, after At the end of his seventh year of attendance, he And in a short time—six months—he had mustered three years more of silent admiration, he approached the reached the table next to the fair cashier. up sufficient courage to cast a glance expressive of deep fair maid at the desk, by two tables. devotion towards the object of his hopes. His declaration came off at the end of another twelve- She smiled on him and he pressed her toname the She named it, They were wed. But it was unly on month, day. ‘emerging from the church that he became aware of a tra- gical circumstance destined to cloud his future with gloom. His wife sported wooden legs. comicbooks.com