your mother and aunt to go for a cruise with me, and I think
I shall succeed.'

He directed me to the studio, and we parted.

I found Cyril in a large and lofty studio in Chelsea, filled with the
curiously carved black furniture of Bombay, mixed, for contrast, with
a few Indian cabinets of carved and fretted ivory exquisitely
wrought. He greeted me cordially. The walls were covered with
Japanese drawings. I began by asking him about The Caricaturist.

'Well,' said he, 'now that the House of Commons has become a
bear-garden, and t'other House a waxwork show, and the intellect and
culture of the country are leaving politics to dummies and cads, how
can the artistic mind condescend to caricature the political world--a
world that has not only ceased to be intelligent, but has even ceased
to be funny? The quarry of _The Caricaturist_ will be literature,
science, and art. Instead of wasting artistic genius upon such small
fry as premiers, diplomatists, and cabinet ministers, our cartoons
will be caricatures of the pictures of Millais, Leighton,
Burne-Jones, Rossetti, Madox Brown, Holman Hunt, Watts, Sandys,
Whistler, Wilderspin: our letterpress will be Aristophanic parodies
of Tennyson, Browning, Meredith, Arnold, Morris, Swinburne; game
worth flying at, my boy! The art-world is in a dire funk, I can tell
you, for the artistic epidermis has latterly grown genteel and thin.'

Already I was beginning to ask myself whether it was possible to make
a confidant of this inscrutable cynic. 'You are fond of Oriental
things?' I said, wishing to turn the subject. I looked round at the
Chinese, Indian, and Japanese monstrosities scattered about the room.

'That,' said he, pointing to a picture of a woman (apparently drunk)
who was amusing herself by chasing butterflies, while a number of
broad-faced, mischievous-looking children were teasing her--'that is
the masterpiece of Hokusai. The legend in the corner is "Kiyo-jo cho
ni tawamureru," which, according to the lying Japanese scholars,
means nothing more than "A cracked woman chasing butterflies." It was
left for me to discover that it represents Yoka, the goddess of Fun,
sportively chasing the butterfly souls of men, while the urchins, the
little Yokas, are crying, "Ma! you're screwed."'

'But what are these quaint figures?' I asked, pointing to certain
drawings of an obese Japanese figure, grinning with lazy good-humour
above several of the cabinets.

'Hotei, the fat god of e