By the end of the 1880s there were over 200 Volapük societies and clubs in the world and 25 Volapük journals. Even people who didn't care to learn it at least knew about it. President Cleveland's wife named her dog Volapük. The craze was big enough to be mocked in local papers such as the Milwaukee Sentinel:
A charming young student of Grük
Once tried to acquire Volapük
But it sounded so bad
That her friends called her mad,
And she quit it in less than a wük.
