A Generous Offer
Engraving
Fun Almanac (26 June 1878): 263.
Old Salt: — “Be you agoing to paint that there red-topped boat yonder, Mister?”
Artist: — “Yes.”
O. S.: — “Then mayhap you’ll be glad of some o’ the we used on her last week!.”
Like much late-Victorian humor, this cartoon relies upon a pun or other play on words, class differences, lower-class speech, and a misunderstanding, but in this case the Old Salt comes off as kindly. By an irony of fate, now that artists like Jackson have used house paint for more than half a century the cartoon no longer works exactly the way it originally did.
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