The Wasp — 1894 — page 351: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This cartoon depicts a man at a "General Delivery" window appearing distressed or deceived. The accompanying dialogue reveals the joke: a man named Silas Siskiyou claims he sent his nephew ten dollars, but his aunt says the nephew received only a postal receipt—implying the money never arrived or was lost in the mail system. "Buncoed" (slang for swindled or tricked) suggests the man feels cheated by the postal service's failure to deliver. The cartoon satirizes the unreliability of mail delivery in 1894, mocking both the postal system's incompetence and the gullibility of people trusting it with money. This reflects contemporary frustration with government services and mail fraud concerns common in the Gilded Age.