e toast of the
stewards. The day is memorable as the last "Founder's Day," which either
of these men--so eminently distinguished in art and letters--was ever
permitted to attend.

Three days afterwards Thackeray was present at the usual weekly _Punch_
dinner on the 15th of December, for, although he had long ceased to be a
regular contributor to the periodical, he not only continued to aid the
staff with his suggestion and advice, but was a constant member of the
council.[160] But ever since the time he was writing "Pendennis," a
dozen years before, he had been visited periodically by attacks of
sickness, attended with violent retching. One of these occurred on the
morning of Wednesday, the 23rd of this same month of December, and he
was in great suffering all day. About midnight of that day, his mother,
Mrs. Carmichael Smith,[161] who slept in the room above his own, had
heard him get up and walk about; but as this was his habit when visited
by these fell visitations, she was not alarmed. The man, however, was
in his mortal agony; and when his valet, Charles Sargent, entered his
master's chamber on the morning of Christmas Eve, and tried to arouse
him, he found that he answered not, neither regarded, having passed into
the slumber from which the spirit of man refuses to be awakened.

Dying Jerrold had time vouchsafed to him to whisper, "Tell the dear
boys," meaning his associates in _Punch_, "that if I have ever wounded
any of them, I've always loved them," and so he went his way. To
Thackeray no such grace was given; the hands peacefully spread over the
coverlet, which stirred not when Sargent bent anxiously over his master,
proclaimed that true hearted noble Thackeray had gone the long journey,
leaving no word of message for those who had loved him. "We talked of
him," said Mr. Edmund Yates, "of how, more than any other author, he had
written about what is said of men immediately after their death--of how
he had written of the death-chamber, 'They shall come in here for the
last time to you, my friend in motley.' We read that marvellous sermon
which the week-day preacher delivered to entranced thousands over old
John Sedley's dead body, and 'sadly fell our Christmas Eve.'" That same
Christmas Eve, the melancholy tidings were conveyed to Mark Lemon by his
sorrowing friend, John Leech. The artist was terribly affected, and told
Millais of his presentiment that he also should die suddenly and soon.

In March, 1864, we