“Drummers” — as travelling salesmen of the late nineteenth century were called (see the below right excerpt from the 1926 52 Letters to Salesmen) — were known for spinning tales & jokes, to get on friendly terms with their customers as part of their sales style. Per last week’s entry on Drummer’s Yarns, this made it a natural for numerous publishers to market jokebooks as collections of drummer’s stories. Amongst the earliest of these thus-titled collections was the mostly prose 1886 Excelsior Publishing House’s Drummer’s Yarns paperback (below right), discussed last week.

Click on any picture, to open an enlarged version.

Excelsior House kept the contents of the above Drummer’s Yarns in print, through multiple editions of Drummer’s Yarns, or, Fun on the Road, shown below. All of these editions are also dated 1886, though possibly that date merely refers to the copyright date of the contents being reprinted.

Note the cover art, whose elements are repeated again and again in later editions. The salesman — or drummer — is forefront, telling a joke to the hotel teller behind the desk, who reacts with hilarity. Note also the evolution of this art, as Excelsior House constantly tweaked with it over time. In the earliest version (left) the drummer is seen from behind, his face hidden. The later editions have lost chromolithographed color, in favor of cheaper-to-print simplified line art. A black male (assumably a porter, given the context and era) has been added to the background, also listening to and enjoying the drummer’s jokes. The drummer’s face has been turned, so it is now visible. The hotel book has been added to the scene, making it more clear where the characters are.

These earliest Excelsior House editions (above) contained few cartoons. However, following the example of rival publishers (see Part 1), who picked up on the success of marketing jokebooks as drummer’s tales, throwing illustrated comics into the mix, Excelsior House made cartoons and sequential comics a regular element of their later publications.

Comics show up heavily in the two below 1894 variations of That Reminds Me!, whose contents are identical, but whose covers have subtle differences. The drummer in the forefront of That Reminds Me! is the same drummer found in Fun on the Road, while the two hotel workers — standing in the same positions found in Fun on the Road, have been changed (including that both are now white).

There are also subtle differences in the cover art between the two below variations: the pose of the characters’ hands, their eyes & facial expressions, the wrinkles in their vests and jackets, flat hair versus curly hair, etc. Less subtle are the secondary titles appearing on the bottom — New Crop of Drummers’ Yarns (left) vs. New Crop of Travelers’ Yarns (right)

Below, example comics from That Reminds Me, swiped from European sources.

And yet another comic from That Reminds Me, also reprinted from European sources, depicting a nineteenth century version of a tazer.

Following the above 1894 That Reminds Me!, Drummer’s Yarns, or, Fun on the Road became an annual publication, appearing every May within the quarterly Excelsior House Library series. Each of these are filled with cartoons and sequential comics (mostly, if not entirely, lefted from elsewhere). For the first several issues, the cover art of the 1886 paperback was brought back, with chromolithographed color added to the simplified 3-character line drawings.

I have not found an issue labelled “1st Crop” — there may possibly not be one. That Reminds Me! likely marks the first annual issue.
2nd Crop = Excelsior Library No. 39, May 1895;
3rd Crop = No. 43, May 1896;
4th Crop = No. 47, May 1897;
5th Crop = No. 51, May 1898

Below, two examples of comics from the 1895 2nd Crop. Left, lifted from Judge Magazine, by artist Chips Bellew (who stole the idea from a series of stereoviews). Right, by artist F.M. Howarth, swiped from Life Magazine.

6th Crop = Excelsior Library No. 55, May 1899;
7th Crop = No. 59, May 1900;
8th Crop = No. 63, May 1901;
9th Crop = No. 67, May 1902;
10th Crop = No. 71, May 1903

Below, example comic, The Lady Drummer, from the 1902 9th Crop.

Below left, the cover from Drummer’s Yarns, 11th Crop, Excelsior Library No. 75, May 1904. Right, the cover of the 18th Crop, 1910. The Excelsior Library numbering is no longer present by this 18th annual issue. With precisely which Crop that numbering system was dropped, I do not know. The newstand depicted on issue 18 is interesting, for the various magazine titles which can be made out when you enlarge the picture.

Below, from left to right, the covers of: Drummer’s Yarns, 19th Crop, 1911; Drummer’s Yarns, 20th Crop, 1912; from the 1920s, New Drummer’s Jokes.

Doug Wheeler