_PUCK, August 10th, 1881._
Bright as is the idea which inspires this cartoon, it inspires only
the interest of reminiscence. PUCK’S chief cartoonist figures himself
as falling asleep upon a hot midsummer day, so soundly that during
his slumber the subjects of his facile pencil invade his studio and
use his drawing materials to depict themselves according to their
own conceit. Thus Roscoe Conkling, practically withdrawn from active
politics, portrays himself as a Jupiter Tonans in the prime of life,
and Mr. Whitelaw Reid, who was at the time accused of dallying with
æsthetic dandyism, appears as a figure somewhat like Mr. Gilbert’s
_Bunthorne_. Peter Cooper appears as a young and auburn-whiskered
man; and Mr. Tilden, even then in the feebleness of old age, sketches
himself as an ambitious athlete. Mr. James Gordon Bennett sketches
himself as the Apollo Belvidere. A subtle pun is here intended. Mr.
Bennett was then prominent through his efforts to introduce the game
of polo into this country. The patch on his nose marks the wound he
is supposed to have received in his mysterious encounter with Mr.
Frederick May, a disreputable man-about-town, with whom Mr. Bennett was
at one time intimate. Mr. John Kelly draws himself as a fashion-plate
model; and Mr. Beecher, whose lineaments age had made somewhat gross,
paints for his picture the likeness of the young man whose eloquence
and originality waked a new fire in the religious circles of the West.
Mr. Talmage draws himself as he perhaps would have liked to have people
think he looked. General Grant sketches a mighty emperor who bears
his features. And that curious political tramp, General Benjamin F.
Butler, uses the canvas to straighten out his curious, ugly mug into
the likeness of a good-looking man. The picture curiously suggests what
General Butler might have been had he been anything but the queer and
unpleasant thing he was.
[Illustration]