Edmund Birckhead Bensell, American
On the Plus Side, Due To Their Boatman’s Failure To Successfully Get Them To the Dock, the Women Didn’t Have Toupée, 1878
Illustration
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Info about this artist is pointed to by my comment at a prior blog entry.
/// The klutz boatman is vulgar and bumbling.
Lost his balance while for the dock fumbling.
At A Critical Moment
blanked what “go with the flow” meant.
Like his pipe, in the water he’s tumbling.
/// Falling boatman art’s broad and cartoony,
(though there’s no speech inside a balloon). He
belly flops on his paunch
while he does a “hat launch.”*
That he “flipped his wig,” too, is just looney.
/// In a second the boatman goes splat,
yet he’s suddenly come aware that
toupee tape’s for the head.
He should not have, instead,
taped his wig to inside of his hat.
/// His two passengers stand there nonplussed,
pummeled by offshore wind’s sudden gust.
Though they’re both fit and trim,
neither one wants to swim
while in long, bulky clothing she’s trussed.
/// Their boatman’s swift disembarkation
put an end to their boating vacation.
As his feet tip the bow
‘neath the surface, they now
think the odds don’t look good for floatation.
/// The boat fills up with water; it’s sinking.
Both girls strip quickly, all the while thinking,
“I’ll be seen in my skivvies!”
Never, (even in privies),
had they caused nearby men to be winking.
/// Since the dock was ten feet off, no more,
the two ladies had soon climbed ashore.
Two men said “You’ll be drier
by our warm, roaring fire.”
What’s your guess— did the two fellows score?
*Hat launch is a phrase used by many fans of early comic strips to describe how cartoonists often indicated a character’s astonishment or other extreme emotions by drawing his hat in mid-air after somehow having flown off his head.