the hoodlums and the police — till something had to be done, and the police finally took hold and broke up the gang."
Many of the cartoons were political, a few on phases of national politics, for a Presidential campaign was at its height during the summer and fall of 1880, when this series appeared. Some were about the follies of the municipal officials, especially the Board of Health, whose futile efforts to control the yellow fever and other epidemics were bitterly attacked by the Item in those days.
But the majority of the cuts pictured quaint local customs, or else certain foibles of human nature which have neither season nor place. A dozen or so were devoted to the delineation of special public nuisances, under the head of "Illustrated Letters from the People," and anathematized the churl, the bore, the boy on "The Unspeakable Velocipede," and others whom
