1916 (WW1) cartoon: Yes, Jeff is very fond of Bob Service’s poems

A nationally syndicated cartoon strip making a reference to World War One backs up my recent point that Robert Service’s poetry of the Klondike was hugely popular…

…And his material, like “Ballads of a Cheechako“, made certain Chinuk Wawa words famous.

The following cartoon of “The Cremation of Sam McGee” has no Chinook Jargon, but it’s a fun reference to cite.

Plus, it demonstrates how it is that we hardly ever find the Jargon printed along with the cussin’ that we know sometimes accompanied it…

There are strange things done in the midnight sun

      By the men who moil for gold;

The Arctic trails have their secret tales

      That would make your blood run cold;

The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,

      But the queerest they ever did see

Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge

      I cremated Sam McGee.

Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows.

Why he left his home in the South to roam ’round the Pole, God only knows.

He was always cold, but the land of gold seemed to hold him like a spell;

Though he’d often say in his homely way that “he’d sooner live in …

Doggone it! The first time since I’ve been in the newspapers that I’ve had a chance to put over a cuss word and it had to get shot away

— “Mutt and Jeff” by Bud Fisher, in the Atlanta (GA) Semi-Weekly Journal of February 15, 1916, page 9

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