What we see here is three youngsters playing marbles, being dispersed by gardener with a water hose.  Once the man falls asleep inside a "summer house," the kids lock him in with a section of latticework and return the favor with the hose.

Besides being the first Katzenjammer Kids Sunday comic page, the primary interest of this episode lies in the fact that three kids are shown.  Some comic strip scholars point to this and proclaim that there were originally three Katzenjammer Kids, only two of which remained from the second episode forward.  To me, however, it is just as likely that the third "kid" is a playmate, maybe even the son of the man with the hose.  Both the third boy and the man look somewhat oriental to these old eyes.

I regret that the image is so poorly reproduced here.  Few copies of this very first episode exist and the only one available to me is a second-generation photocopy.  Of course this page was originally published in color.

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