Noise-canceling headphones, 1902.

Elephant tricks.

Dear readers,

We have concocted a brief list of quips that the figures in the below-presented Illustration may be saying, or may be said about them. We think you and your family will find our japes witty and hilarious!

Jape #1 - "Using only this elephant, I have bagged an elephant!"

Jape #2 - "O! Jumbo! That's no stool!"

Jape #3 - My word, good sir! Your elephant seems to have a deleterious case of "elephant ear"! Ho ho ho ho ho!

Jape #4 - Is that the elephant's tail, or has he had a bowel-movement on the other's head?

Jape #5 - But sir, that's not how elephants rut! It shall take a long time to make a baby elephant in such a manner!

Jape #6 - Said the prone elephant, "I think I can hear a distant rumbling."

Jape #7 - It's fortunate that circus animals aren't fed spicy foreign food, isn't it?

Jape #8 - It is a wonder that elephants don't destroy us all.

Jape #9 - My friend, I believe your circus needs more attractions!

Jape #10 - If you look closely, the gentleman in the drawing isn't holding down the elephant by mean strength. There's an elephant helping him.

Jape #11 - Sometimes, elephants wish they could forget.

Jape #11 was quipped by new frequent reader Mat Black, a bawdy jokester if there ever was one! - Despite numerous political connections, the Governor General was quietly replaced after reports of his Inter-species menage a trois began circulating in Parliament. "Old Peanut Bottom" lived out the remainder of his life in relative obscurity as a roust-about for the Ringling Brothers.

[Quips submitted by our Dear Readers shall be included in the Picto-Post.  -Mgmt.]

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1902 Sears Catalog - Put your Hand Inside the Puppet Head.

The craziness from 1902 just doesn't stop. Have a look at this page from Sears. Why were they so keen on puppets back then? Maybe it was one of their few forms of entertainment back then, apart from the "New Invention of Germ Theory" and maybe burning witches. Maybe it was some kind of pre-vaudeville cornball comedy obsession or something. Sure, Sears was pretty much the only game in town as far as mail order was concerned, and they had fifteen pages of rifles, and six pages of pocket watches. why not have at least one page of your catalog's puppet section dedicated to the sale of baby puppets? I guess it makes sense if you thi... Huh? What's that? You're joking. Well, I've just been informed that, apparently, those are clothes for actual babies they're selling.

Like I always say, nothing is too stupid to become popular. So, why shouldn't 1902 develop some weird trend about dressing your baby in a garment three times the length of the child's body? Maybe it was aspirational? Maybe the hope was that the child would somehow grow legs to fill the length of the gown? A gold fish will grow to fill the tank it lives in. Even been to a Chinese restaurant and seen that huge aquarium with one huge fish in it that can hardly turn around? A baby confined to a three-foot long baby dress would presumably grow to be three feet tall, at which time the baby would need to shed the garment and find a suitable replacement, such as the grass collection bag from a lawnmower.

Ooo! better still... maybe it was like a lizard who can lose his tail? As you know, in 1902, Americans still lived in grass huts and were routinely chased by sabre-toothed raccoons. If the baby wore a long enough garment, the predator would bite at the trailing hem, which would tear off, giving the baby precious seconds to run away and make good the escape!

Or if the baby was really thinking clearly... he or she would return to the scene with an entire war party of babies, armed with pointed sticks. A family of babies could live for weeks on the carcass of one boar. Primitive babies of 1902 let no part of their prey go to waste. Even the hair of the beast would be fashioned into mustaches and goatees, to disguise their identities as they launched raids on other baby tribes. I think we could all learn a lesson from our baby ancestors, don't you?

This page from the Sears catalog show us a sample selection of "Infants' Long Cloaks". Such raiment was the favorite of wizard babies. Among the baby tribe, the wizard was most revered, whether he or she was a healer, shaman, or battlemage, all the baby tribe looked to the wizard baby to keep the family group safe and healthy. Of course, now, we know there is no such thing as magic

Those ignorant savages of 1902. They would believe anything.

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A Rifle for Everybody - 1902 Sears catalog. Also, vintage race expedition.

Today we're off on a photographic expedition to the VSCDA Elkhart Lake Vintage Festival, taking pictures of gorgeous old race cars and shopping for the latest designs in underchin drool buckets. While we're away, please enjoy these listings for rifles, from the 1902  Sears catalog (a time when, in America, 90% of the people you pass on the street could do at least two different "hog hollers", unlike today, when only 30% are so able, the programming efforts of The "Discovery" Channel notwithstanding). One item  is a "safety rifle", meant for children, and the other is a rifle designed just for cyclists! They just really really wanted everybody to have guns everywhere, all the time.

How many proud Junior Safety Rifle owners were heard to announce to their friends "Yessir! This here's a jin-you-WINE Quackenbush!" All of them, I hope. I imagine Wash Hogwallop's son had a Quackenbush Safety Rifle. He's sitting on a Sears and Wards catalog in this scene from O Brother, Where Art Thou, where he's about to R-U-N-N-O-F-T.

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Sears, Roebuck and Co. - Juvenile Magic Lantern Outfit

The young people not only derive great pleasure from giving MANGIC LANTERN EXHIBITIONS, but the business training which they gain in all the various details connected with the management of entertainment, putting up advertising posters, selling tickets, etc., gives them ideas of the rudiments of money making which starts them on the highway to business success.

REMEMBER that each outfit is complete, containing A FINE MAGIC LANTERN, A SPLENDID ASSORTMENT OF COLORED VIEWS, A LARGE SUPPLY OF ADVERTISING POSTERS, PLENTY OF TICKETS.

After starting your juvenile on the road to hucksterism and visual  chicanery, see how the Confidence grows in him! Your family will marvel at the many COLORED VIEWS presentable with the Gem Magic Lantern.

After observing the marvellous exhibitions presentable with the Gem Magic Lantern, you may very well find your young person guilty of Witchery. Such views and colors were not meant on God's Earth, and surely must be the work of The Devil. Do not be seduced by visual trickery afforded by the Wonderous Gift you have so recently purchased for your juvenile! You may desire to punish your juvenile for such pleasant exhibitions. Please be reassured that Sears, Roebuck, And Co. has a full supply of ropes, lumber, flint-and-tinder, Bibles, Mineral Spirits and also everything you may need for burning a Witch. Please find these various supplies listed under WITCHCRAFT, PUNISHMENT and also under HOLY RETRIBUTION.

Sears, Roebuck and Co. - Acme Anvils

Citizens, it is with great pride of merchandise that we are able to bring to you, our customers, this, the greatest of the anvil-maker's art. The Acme anvil, which is truly the finest we have seen in all of the world.

No longer is it a daily necessity that you somehow live under the tyranny of the knowledge that you must use an anvil made by The Hated British, merely because you desire the finest anvilling in the whole of the world. Now, anvils of the Finest Quality are made here in the United States by the good Acme Company, and we defy any Charlatan to call them inferior in any way!

There is a steel face for greater hammering, which is welded to the glorious wrought-iron body. "How is it welded to the body? By the work of Demons?" you say? No, dear customer. The extra-heavy steel face is welded to the wrought-iron body by an Electrical process that harnesses the very heavenly forces of lightning in the mighty hand of man! Never the twain shall part, under the vigor of your hardest smithying. We dare say this is tantamount to owning a solid steel anvil, which, we will remind you, can only be afforded by the richest Princes of the Distant East.

The face is tempered by a Secret Process, carried out in a veiled ritual of the Anvil Maker's art. The quality of the tempering all but assures the Anvil Customer total absence of being-too-hard-ness or being-too-soft-ness. These problems are rampant in lesser-quality anvils, and the secrets of the Acme Company have eradicated them in their process.

The face is trued by a special machine of a certain construxion whose accuracy and firmness are irreproachable in their quality of make. This machine for truing of the Acme anvils is so very special that there is none other like it in all the land. There are no hollows protuberances or concavities in the totality of the anvil face, which will magnify the greatness of the smithy that owns it.

Sears, Roebuck, and Co. now delivers to the Great Deserts of the American South-West, making available these finely-made anvils to all who dwell there. In such places Acme anvils are utilitous for the purposes of smithying, and also for counter-weighting traps and snares of all kinds, owing to the ready availability of mesas, and the great heights these afford the clever trap-maker.

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