Alan Mays' photos with the keyword: buckles

So why is a kid with a dopey expression hoisting a giant flower-filled slipper onto another kid's back? It's just another Victorian-era mystery waiting to be solved in this curious illustration from an unused advertising trade card.

Handwritten note on the back of this real photo postcard: "Elwood Nettleton, age 11, as he looked at his dancing class reception, April 1911." Interestingly, a brief biography of Edward L. Nettleton in A Modern History of New Haven and Eastern New Haven County , Volume 2, by Everett Gleason Hill (New York: Clarke Publishing, 1918), pp. 321-22, mentions a son named Elwood: "Elwood T. Nettleton, the third son, was born in West Haven in 1899 and is now attending the Sanford School at Redding Ridge, Connecticut." Since Elwood T. Nettleton would have turned 12 years old sometime in 1911, it's possible that this is a photo of the same Elwood Nettleton taken prior to his birthday that year.