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DISGUSTED.

R

days, and Niles, Strong, and Saalsburg, in later times, have made this work to some extent a specialty. But the main array has been of "one-picture" caricaturists, for whose just mention and discussion too much space would be required. What is intended is to show in a cursory way the scope of the work in caricature on the Pacific Slope, and to suggest those lines that seem to be characteristic to the West.

daily life; and art, music, the drama, the debating society, the pursuit of culture for culture's sake are gradually making their civilizing effect felt upon him. He caricatures these things of course, and laughs at them; but he submits to them one by one, and sooner or later he will come to be proud of them.

Perhaps as distinctive as any thing in this later caricature is the idea of setting forth the accordeon as the typical instrument of music of the Coast. As usual, however, there is an element of truth in the matter that will not brook denial. What the harp is to Erin, such is the accordeon to the West.

There is of course a cultus in the larger

INGENUOUS.

cities that understands and appreciates true music. There is a much larger class throughout the State that think they appreciate music, whose voices mingled with the voice of the piano and the organ are forever abroad in the land. But when the populace, as such comes to be taken into consideration, there is no choice but to yield the palm to the accor deon both for multitude and popularity.

temporate

Aside from the Chinese work it must not be expected that the subject matter will present much that savors of novelty. The Western man of today is interested in the same pursuits and callings, and given over to the same diversions and amusements, as is his brother of the East.

Athletics in its phases of foot-ball, baseball, sprinting, bicycling, and lawn tennis, have come to have a regular place in his

peaceful

In the tenement houses of Tar Flat and the Barbary Coast and the mining claims of Shasta, it is alike the interpreter of the sentimental outpourings of the Western musical soul. Its portability and cheapness long ago established it in popular favor, and its peculiar delivery brought it a change of name from its proper appellation to the more striking, if less euphemistic one, of the "wind jammer." There is something too about the breathless pauses and the general uncertainty of its music, that makes it a fit and sympathetic accompaniment to the untrained human voice. People do not expect as much from the soloist who sings to an accordeon obligato, as they would under other and less trying circumstances.

QUIET

It is essentially the students' book, and in It must not be gathered from this article it they pay off all the scores of the year, laid

orderly

that more than the usual proportion of the caricature of the Coast is worth examination. There is the same dreary multitude of witless efforts, the same pathetic host of attempts to be funny which were not funny, to be found in Western as in Eastern caricature. The proportion of good to bad, however, is fully up to the average of other sections, and both in point of conception and execution this class of work is something of which the West may well be proud.

Some of the most clever sketches of later days originated with the under-graduates of the University of California. Their year

book, the Blue and Gold, has contained some of the brightest caricatures ever done here; and taking year after year, it outranks in point of cleverness any similar publication issued from the colleges of the East.

up against the faculty and each other. Most of the subjects are of necessity local, and therefore devoid of interest to the public at large. But many of the little touches are so human that everyone is compelled to smile at their humorous malice.

For instance, it is customary each year to publish in it a list of the faculty, followed by some cut emblematic of their estimation in the student mind. When the class of '81 in its junior year was debarred from attendance for some misconduct, the Blue and Gold promptly came out with the usual list, followed by a cut of a pair of suspenders, which spoke louder than words as to what one of the faculty's actions during the year had most impressed the student mind. At a later pe

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NOT THAT I THINK YOU WOULD CHEAT

BUT

riod, after some disagreement in which the boys fancied they had come out ahead, the list was followed by the significant cut reproduced here, of a hand holding a test tube, and vainly endeavoring to shut off the gas with its thumb.

Equally good is the "Student Beverages" used as a tail piece to this article. There is about as much real truth in the allotment of Bourbon to the Senior's use as in that of milk to the Freshman's. The Western student is not a drinking man, and no college could be more free from "social convivialities" than the one at Berkeley. But it has pleased the popular mind in the past to ascribe to the University an infelix reputation for intemperance mainly because the boys' refused to take the efforts of the reformers in their behalf in a proper spirit of seriousness, and finding that it kept them before the public, the callow fledglings have made bold to pose on paper and in print, disguised in a lion's skin of wickedness and dissipation that really does not belong to them at all. In the present sketch, however, there is the further suggestion of the advance in the quality of knowledge taken in, from the "infants' food" of the first semester to the "strong drink" of the commencement term.

It is a curious thing what an exaggerated idea of his "honor" a college undergraduate has. He is all the time expecting to be treated as if his manliness would prevent him from doing anything out of the way, and yet at the same time his immaturity is leading him into all sorts of pranks that require a strong check to keep them within the limit of the law. Suggest to him that he is being watched, and he is in arms in a moment to prove that it is necessary. The examination illustrates scene herein - taken from life this case very well. The personal supervision of the instructor was such that the students felt that they were expected to cheat; and more than one sly thing was done by men who had no need to go outside of themselves for help, solely on principle, because it was expected of them.

[graphic]

"THE WIND OF THE WESTERN SEA."

UMPIRING. AN APPEAL FROM THE DECISION.

Under the head of "educational caricatures" come the hits at the professions. Doctors and lawyers are much the same here as elsewhere, and equally touchy as to their foibles. There is more of a sting in the fling at the latter than in the picture devoted to the doctors here. The lawyer always comes in for a suspicion of graspingness and dishon esty, and it is no doubt true that the popular mind in California distinctly associates these qualities with them as a class.

The doctor, however, is rarely suspected of purely mercenary motives. When the average Californian gets under the weather, he calls in a physician with much the feeling of the man who started to cross the river on the ice. He hopes it will hold together till he gets across, but he rather expects it won't.

The caricature of things medicinal, therefore, generally takes the shape of a goodnatured banter concerning his methods and ability, of which the cartoon of the doctor "practicing" on the wooden manikin with its feet in a mustard bath is a fair example.

In athletics much of the old straw is trodden over. It is more a question of the way things are put, the variations in the distortion. of the figures in the drawing together, with the rearrangement of the regular stock fig

ures in different groupings, that serve to make them worthy of attention. Saalsburg's 'Umpiring" is suggestive but not new. The "Last Lap" is interesting only from its exaggerations of the heel and toe step of the professional walkers. Brighter is Niles, punning sketch on the "full backs" of foot-ball. This latter, however, is not a special class caricature, and is more deserving because it is

FEEL IT

THE RESULT OF PRACTICE.

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harder to get the humorous effect out of the field of general work.

Of this field of general work, space has been found for only two examples. These - the "Incentive to Action," and "The Beginning of March" - depend for their effect entirely on that general bond of sympathy that is common to all humanity. The knight who conquers by gentle means instead of by force of spur is the real hero of modern chivalry, and it is not an idea peculiar to one or two alone that a donkey can be oftentimes better induced to go by feeding than by driving.

It is a curious feature of caricature in Cal

ifornia that it should confine itself so largely to local subjects. Similar work in the East is comparatively devoid of earmarks. At least it is as common for it to be national as narrowly local. But in California there seldom if ever appears a skit devoted to outside affairs.

This is all the more curious because the population is so truly cosmopolitan, and on any established race principle ought to be alive to the politics at least of the mother countries that gave them birth, and interested still in all that concerns their welfare.

Probably the solution of the matter lies in the comparative smallness of the population as a whole. The great chains of mountains lying between California and the East have

acted as barriers between the two sections more than most people are willing to admit. It is not probable that the Germans in the West have forgotten their fatherland, or that the French, or Italians, or other foreigners. here are less in touch with their old home sympathies than are their brethren in the East. But there are too few of each nationality yet in any one place to make the caricatures that appeal to only one nationality popular. Caricature to be successful must present something familiar at a glance to everybody. Just as we are too small a community yet to have class newspapers, so we are yet too small to support class caricatures. Only that which is local appeals to all, and therefore that which is local has gained almost exclusive ground in Western caricature.

In pioneer days this was not altogether true. There was such a constant influx of men from the outside world, and such a constant outgoing from the gold fields of isfied themselves that there was nothing to those who, having made their fortunes or satbe made, turned their backs on the new El Dorado and returned to their earlier homes, that practically there was nothing local to take their attention and sympathy from what interested the communities from which they

came.

Some very excellent work of truly national spirit was done by Charles Nahl, and during interest in national affairs. But when the war times there was naturally a wide-spread

AN INCENTIVE TO ACTION.

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