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Here, Nast offers up a self-caricature in a
lament to the end of the campaign. The disgruntled cartoonist wonders "What
am I to do now?" Nast stands isolated in the foreground, while behind him a
crowd rejoices in front of the New York Times building where placards proclaim
Grant's "Grand Victory," the destruction of "The Senatorial
Cabal," "Sham Reform Exposed," and in tiny characters, "H.G.
Gone West," an allusion to Greeley's famous advice to enterprising young
Americans: "Go west, young man, go west." At the upper-left, a
discreet announcement on the Tribune office building reads "The Greeley
Triumph Postponed." After two years of intense professional exertion during
the anti-Tweed and anti-Greeley campaigns, it is hardly surprising to find that
Nast was exhausted. He would take a six-month leave-of-absence from Harper's in
1873. |
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