Obscurity of the Day: Artful Arty

Albert Levering was a very well-respected illustrator and cartoonist. His work appeared regularly in Puck, Harper's Weekly and other high visibility venues. He only did two newspaper comic strip series, though, and Artful Arty and Alec Smart was by far the more successful (but, yes, it's still very much an obscurity). Levering did a year's worth of the strip for the Philadelphia Press, which never really succeeded particularly well in syndicating their Sunday section.

The strip ran from 10/15/1905 to 10/14/1906. I sat down to read a strip or two before writing this post so that I could summarize the plot. Well, I ended up reading all that I have on hand, a half-dozen or so, and honestly I'm still not sure what exactly the theme was supposed to be. Either I'm pretty dense or Levering just didn't have his heart in this half-baked strip. I don't understand the rummaging angle, which recurs, in particular.