Illustrating Webster

This strip illustrates Webster's definition of "tac"—a humorous riff on a tenant's customary payment to a landlord. The single-panel gag features two figures in a domestic interior: a woman in an apron and a man in formal dress exchanging words and coins. Artist Frank J. Stanton employs the visual conventions that were crystallizing in newspaper comics of the 1910s: speech balloons, clear character poses, and architectural framing that grounds the joke. The strip mines the dictionary-definition format for comedy, a popular device among early cartoonists exploring the emerging language of sequential visual humor in the American Sunday and daily newspapers.