In this cartoon Thomas Nast presents a careful
parody of illustrator Robert Seymour's celebrated initial plate to Charles
Dickens' landmark novel The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Better known
as The Pickwick Papers, this book appeared serially in 1836-1837. The tale
begins as Mr. Samuel Pickwick, Esq., "mounted into the Windsor Chair on
which he had previously been seated, and addressed the club he himself had
founded."