Puck (magazine)

“ Puck (or as he was sometimes called, Robin Goodfellow) was a shrewd and knavish sprite, that used to play comical pranks in the neighbouring villages; sometimes getting into the dairies and skimming the milk, sometimes plunging his light and airy form into the butter-churn, and while he was dancing his fantastic shape in the churn, in vain the dairymaid would labour to change her cream into butter: nor had the village swains any better success; whenever Puck chose to play his freaks in the brewing copper, the ale was sure to be spoiled. ”

“ Keppler and his associate artists in Puck than by all the work of editors, lawyers and judges. Puck’s influence in politics became so great that before the last Presidential campaign began it became absolutely necessary for the party which it was fighting to start a humorous pictorial journal of their own, and it{564} was quite safe to suppose that it was influential in the political results that followed.
A delightful thing about humorous writings is that no one seems jealous of their influence or afraid to give them greater prominence. ”

“ The vogue which, through Nast, Harper’s Weekly gave to caricature, prepared the way for the first purely comic weekly paper, Puck, founded by two Germans, and for long published in a German as well as an English edition—a journal which has cast its influence generally in favour of the Democratic party. It is worth noting that not only the founders but the spirit of American caricature have been rather German than English, the American comic papers more closely resembling Fliegende Blätter, for example, than Punch. ”

“ Well, for the very reason that Puck can beat the rest of us at spells and transformations, I should like to see him do for us as many stunts as he can. I've heard from a mortal, named Shakespeare, that, in one performance, Puck could be a horse, a hound, a hog, a bear without any head, and even kindle himself into a fire; while his vocal powers, as we know, are endless. ”

“ The characteristic attributes of the fairy people are, perhaps, most availably represented in Puck; who is apt to remind one of Ariel, though the two have little in common, save that both are preternatural, and therefore live no longer in the faith of reason. Puck is no such sweet-mannered, tender-hearted, music-breathing spirit, as Prospero's delicate prime-minister; there are no such fine interweavings of a sensitive moral soul in his nature, he has no such soft touches of compassion and pious awe of goodness, as link the dainty Ariel in so smoothly with our best sympathies. ”

“ No, are you? I once played in it at the O.U.D.S. I wanted to be Bully Bottom, but I wasn't much good, so they made me Snug the joiner. I remember the man who played Puck was a wonder, about as light on his feet and as swift as the real Puck. ”

“ The following passage from a modern writer [11] proves, too, that in some places the idea of Puck as a delusive fairy haunting the woods and fields is not yet extinct: "The peasants in certain districts of Worcestershire say that they are sometimes what they call 'Poake-ledden,' that is, they are occasionally waylaid in the night by a mischievous sprite whom they call Poake, who leads them into ditches, bogs, pools, and other such scrapes, often sets up a loud laugh, and leaves them, quite bewildered, in the lurch." ”

“ The rider turned towards them, and his thin, long face was just as sweet and gentle as that of the knight who carries the children in that picture.
‘They should be here now, Sir Richard,’ said Puck’s deep voice among the willow-herb.
‘They are here,’ the knight said, and he smiled at Dan with the string of trouts in his hand. ‘There seems no great change in boys since mine fished this water.’
[pg 35] ‘If your horse has drunk, we shall be more at ease in the Ring,’ said Puck; and he nodded to the children as though he had never magicked away their memories the week before. ”

“ I can do that for a century at a time.’
‘Ah, but you are a fairy,’ said Dan.
‘Have you ever heard me use that word yet?’ said Puck, quickly.
‘No. You talk about “the People of the Hills,” but you never say “fairies,”’ said Una. ‘I was wondering at that. Don’t you like it?’
‘How would you like to be called “mortal” or “human being” all the time?’ said Puck; ‘or “son of Adam” or “daughter of Eve”?’
‘I shouldn’t like it at all,’ said Dan. ”

“ Peter knows now that the little red house and the garden can never get on without him.
It is odd to see the animals with him; Don cannot be attentive enough, but you would expect a dog to understand. Puck is a wonder, standing as meekly as a lamb to let himself be harnessed by a one-armed man, though he used to dance an ancient British war-dance as the straps went on. The old racial love of fair fighting shines out in him; man to man it used to be, or man to pony, when both were able-bodied, but he will take no advantage of a handicap. ”

“ He turned his eyes on Una.
‘I’ll do it,’ she said. Dan followed her example at once.
[pg 13] ‘Now are you two lawfully seized and possessed of all Old England,’ began Puck, in a sing-song voice. ‘By Right of Oak, Ash, and Thorn are you free to come and go and look and know where I shall show or best you please. You shall see What you shall see and you shall hear What you shall hear, though It shall have happened three thousand year; and you shall know neither Doubt nor Fear. Fast! ”

“ In these times, when Puck has fulfilled his boast and put a girdle about the earth in forty minutes, we are not yet perhaps in danger of forgetting that a century has not elapsed since he who caught the lightning upon his kite was laid in the grave. ”

“ H. English, General John A. Logan, Mr. John Kelly, (of New York City,) General B. F. Butler, Mr. Thos. F. Bayard, and Mr. Abram S. Hewitt.
“There is, moreover,” Puck goes on to say, “something more in that cartoon. There is a gentle hint of a duty that we have forgotten too long, in the excitement of that wild political fight—the duty of going back to the plain old ideal of friendly federation which our forefathers had constantly in mind. We do not wish to talk any of the cheap cant about clasping hands over the bloody chasm. All the hand-shaking in the world won’t close a crevasse up. ”

“ We have made it so by making it mysterious, by surrounding it with silence, by making it a forbidden topic. It is the most beautiful story in life."
Mr. Curtis, alone, encouraged his editor. Was he sure he was right? If he was, why not go ahead? Bok called his attention to the fact that a heavy loss in circulation was a foregone conclusion; he could calculate upon one hundred thousand subscribers, at least, stopping the magazine. "It is a question of right," answered the publisher, "not of circulation." ”

“ PUCK; AND POETS' FAIRIES.
PUCK, as we said, is Shakespeare's fairy. There is some probability that he found in Cwm Pwca, or Puck Valley, a part of the romantic glens of Clydach, in Breconshire, the original scenes of his fanciful Midsummer Night's Dream. This glen used to be crammed with goblins. There, and in many like-named Welsh places, Puck's pranks were well-remembered by old inhabitants. This Welsh Puck was a queer little figure, long and grotesque, and looked something like a chicken half out of his shell; at least, so a peasant drew him, from memory, with a bit of coal. ”

“ Puck laughed.
‘Child,’ the man answered, ‘if it hath pleased Heaven to afflict me with an infirmity—’
‘Nay, nay,’ Puck struck In, ‘the maid spoke out of kindness. I know that half your cough is but a catch to trick the vulgar; and that’s a pity. There’s honesty enough in you, Nick, without rasping and hawking.’
‘Good people’—the man shrugged his lean shoulders—‘the vulgar crowd love not truth unadorned. Wherefore we philosophers must needs dress her to catch their eye or—ahem!—-their ear.’
‘And what d’you think of that?’ said Puck solemnly to Dan. ”

“ Started by the proprietors of Punch, with the co-operation of an artistic staff that has been singularly fortunate in enlisting always the services of the best men of their day, it is obvious that few periodicals have ever been launched under happier auspices. Its aim was obviously to do for fiction, light literature, and belles-lettres, what Punch had accomplished so admirably for satire and caricature. At that time, with no rivals worth consideration, a fixed intention to obtain for a new magazine the active co-operation of the best men of all schools was within the bounds of possibility. ”

“ One episode in the life of Puck, a black and tan terrier more intelligent than “breedy,” deserves repetition. The dog had accompanied the Professor and some of his children into the country one afternoon on an expedition to dig for antiquarian 139 relics. “After tea Puck, seeing every one carrying something to the station, demanded the honour of relieving his master of a Lancet, and went off with his small burden looking very important.... At the station the dog was missing. All got into their places but Puck. ”

“ It will not, of its own volition, seek them. It did not do so with magazines; it will not do so with books.
In the meanwhile, Bok's literary letter had prospered until it was now published in some forty-five newspapers. One of these was the Philadelphia Times. In that paper, each week, the letter had been read by Mr. Cyrus H. K. Curtis, the owner and publisher of The Ladies' Home Journal. Mr. Curtis had decided that he needed an editor for his magazine, in order to relieve his wife, who was then editing it, and he fixed upon the writer of Literary Leaves as his man. ”

“ Men have been trying ever since to catch up with him, but they have not gone ahead of him yet.
If, only three hundred years ago, this were the case, what must have been Puck's fun, when he saw men in the early days, working so hard to make even a clay cup or saucer. These people who slept and ate in cave boarding-houses, knew nothing of metals, or how to make iron or brass tools, wire, or machines, or how to touch a button and light up a whole room, which even a baby can now do. ”

“ The boy carries such an iron with him. They tell me our Devils were apes, called gorillas!' said Sir Richard, indignantly.
'That is the sorcery of books,' said Puck. 'I warned thee they were wise children. All people can be wise by reading of books.'
'But are the books true?' Sir Richard frowned. 'I like not all this reading and writing.'
'Ye-es,' said Puck, holding the naked dandelion head at arm's length. 'But if we hang all fellows who write falsely, why did De Aquila not begin with Gilbert the Clerk? ”

“ Puck, or Robin Goodfellow, is the leader of the fairy band. He is the Ariel of the Midsummer Night’s Dream; and yet as unlike as can be to the Ariel in the Tempest. No other poet could have made two such different characters out of the same fanciful materials and situations. Ariel is a minister of retribution, who is touched with the sense of pity at the woes he inflicts. Puck is a mad-cap sprite, full of wantonness and mischief, who laughs at those whom he misleads—“Lord, what fools [Pg 86]
Notes these mortals be!” ”

“ Then each man will have the lady who loves him, and they will all think that this has been only a Midsummer-Night's Dream. Then when this is done, all will be well with them."
So Puck went and did as he was told, and when the two had fallen asleep without meeting each other, Puck poured the juice on Lysander's eyes, and said:—
"When thou wakest, Thou takest True delight In the sight Of thy former lady's eye: Jack shall have Jill; Nought shall go ill."
Meanwhile Oberon found Titania asleep on a bank where grew wild thyme, oxlips, and violets, and woodbine, musk-roses and eglantine. ”

“ My idea is to take some weekly magazine which caters either for some special trade or amusement or pursuit. Let us imagine it to be The Chicken Run, with which is incorporated The Fowls' Guardian. I am entitled to assume that most of Mr. Punch's readers are acquainted with this bright and lively feathered journal. My plan is to get together some bold spirits, to capture the editor and his staff, and to hold them in a comfortable but rigorous imprisonment for one week; to take possession of the editorial office, and then to set to work to transform the contents of the paper. ”

“ When thou wak'st, it is thy dear:
396Wake when some vile thing is near.
[Exit Oberon] (The mischievous little Puck, wandering in the forest, meets a clownish fellow named Bottom. Very slyly Puck slips an ass's head over Bottom's hairy pate; and in this strange disguise the clown walks very near the flowery bank where Titania lies sleeping. He sings in a harsh voice and awakens the Fairy Queen. The charm makes her fall in love with Bottom, since he is the first creature she sees upon waking.) ”

“ Mr. Curtis believed that the editor should write the advertisements of a magazine’s articles. “You are the one who knows them, what is in them and your purpose,” he said to Bok, who keenly enjoyed this advertisement writing. He put less and less in his advertisements. Mr. Curtis made them larger and larger in the space which they occupied in the media used. In this way The Ladies’ Home Journal advertisements became distinctive for their use of white space, and as the advertising world began to say: “You can’t miss them.” ”

“ He had a voice that changed its tone almost as an opal changes colour—sometimes deep and thundery, sometimes thin and waily, but always it made you listen.
'Many people can bear witness to that,' Puck answered. 'Tell these babes how it was done. Remember, Master, they do not know Doubt or Fear.'
'So I saw in their faces when we met,' said Kadmiel. 'Yet surely, surely they are taught to spit upon Jews?'
'Are they?' said Dan, much interested. 'Where at?'
Puck fell back a pace, laughing. 'Kadmiel is thinking of King John's reign,' he explained. ”