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At center, Uncle Sam is drowning in the “Souvenir Post Card Craze.” Surrounding vignettes show scenes from the North Pole, North Africa, Hell, and with Robinson Crusoe on a desert island.
The century’s first decade was the high-water mark of “penny postals,” greeting cards, holiday cards and comic-themed cards. This is evidenced by the uncountable numbers of surviving cards at flea markets, antique shops, and collector sites.
The devil delivers a tiny piece of ice to a bloated businessman labeled “The Ice Man” wearing a fur coat and sitting on a heater in Hell. Caption: Satan — Yep, this is the biggest fifty pounds I can let you have. On account of the mild winter, ice is very scarce here!
Cartoonist L. M. Glackens scored a hat trick with his cover cartoon about ice deliveries in hot summer months. As a purely humorous cartoon, and in the days prior to electric home refrigeration, virtually every reader would appreciate the jab at ice deliveries literally shaving the weight of blocks for home ice boxes.
This vignette cartoon depicts changes to folklore, fairy tales, courtship, and punishment, that will result from the cycling craze. Vignettes include witches riding bicycles instead of brooms, Father Time riding a bicycle, Cupid running over victims with a bicycle instead of shooting arrows at them, fairies on bicycles, and a cyclist’s nightmare in Hell.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1897-07-21
Print shows the spirit of an executed murderer rising to Heaven as a minister wipes clean the “Blackboard of Crime” on which are “Murder, Arson, [and] Robb[ery]” with the “Sponge of Absolution” as “years of sin [are] wiped out in ten minutes.” Meanwhile “the wife of the victim experiences Hell on Earth” at a cemetery in the upper left, and “the ‘unprepared’ victim” descends to the flames of “Purgatory” accompanied by devils.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1882-06-28
Print shows Hugh McLaughlin with a label that states “Boss McLaughlin Hades”, thrown from a pitchfork labeled “Resignation” toward John Kelly who is roasting on a grill over flaming coals in “Hades”.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1881-11-09
Illustration showing Jay Gould as the Devil holding a paper labeled “Majority of Stock”, standing outside an office labeled “Successor to Satan”; he is presiding over the “Hades & World Lightning Transportation Line” which is a railroad train headed for a station labeled “Terminus – President Jay Gould.” The locomotive is labeled “Crasher” and uses “Brimstone” for fuel, a passenger car is labeled “Only Anti-Monopolists Carried,” also the “Sulphuric Telegraph Co. – Gould Pres.” which has many devil-like demons stringing wire cables on telegraph poles and an office where telegraph operators work at desks beneath a sign that states “Any Imp who attempts to strike will be transferred to the Western Union Company”, as well as “The Bottomless Pit Roasting Co. – Jay Gould, Pres.” where an “Anti-Monopolist editor”, “Puck”, and “Thurber” are roasted “in effigy.” At bottom, a man labeled “Satan Janitor”, with bandages, carries a scuttle filled with brimstone, a watering-can labeled “Kerosene”, a broom, and a key ring, skulks down the steps from Gould’s office. Caption: How the place will be run, two years after Jay Gould’s arrival.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1883-09-19
A number of historical figures enjoy the pleasant atmosphere of “Sheol” after suffering the flames of Hell. At left is a dejected Devil sitting beneath a sign that states, “This Business is Removed to Sheol, Opposite.” Among those ferried across the river by “Charon” are “Hypatia, Fanny Elssler, Voltaire, Frederick [the] Great, Socrates, J. Offenbach, Darwin, J. S. Mill, Rousseau, George Sand, Galileo, Jefferson, Th. Paine, Goethe, [and] H. Heine.” Caption: According to the new version of the Old Testament, many respectable people who have been writhing in the old fashioned Hell will have to be transferred to the pleasant watering-place known as “Sheol.” This is Puck’s notion of the evolution of Hell to Sheol.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
1885-05-27