in due time was sent
home. It was carefully hung on the drawing-room wall, and the
newly-blossomed art patron was called in to see it. He gazed at it for
some time in silence, his eyes filled with tears, and then, slowly
nodding his head, he said softly and reverently, "So that is my father!
Ah, how he is changed!"

But out of this lecture comes another story--the story of "The Great Six
Toes Trial." I must start at the beginning of its strange, eventful
history, the same way as, in my lecture, I began with the origin of
portraiture.

Now the late George Augustus Sala, in his leader in the _Daily
Telegraph_ on this lecture, accused me of not giving the origin of
portraiture. "Mr. Harry Furniss was bold enough to maintain that,
although Greek art remained the model art of the world, portraiture had
very little to do with it. Mr. Furniss should not tell this story to the
prehistoric toad, for that reptile's presumably long memory might enable
it to remind the graphic artist that thousands of years ago the art of
portraiture was invented by a sentimental young Greek girl, the daughter
of a potter of Corinth, Dibutades." In the same article he sneered at
"a whimsical caricaturist lecturing his contemporaries," and in his
references to me was about as offensive as he could be.

[Illustration: G. A. SALA.]

The second stage was my letter to the Editor of the _Daily Telegraph_.
That paper not printing it, I sent it, with a note, to the Editor of the
_Pall Mall Gazette_, who gave both letters a prominent position:

"SIR,--Can you find space for the publication of the following
letter which I addressed to the _Daily Telegraph_ in answer to
their leader in last Friday's issue, as the insignificant
paragraph, 'Greek Portraits,' which alone the _Daily Telegraph_
inserted, in no way states the facts of the case?"

"SIR,--The writer of the leader in your issue of last Friday is
guilty of the very fault of which he accuses me. He charges me with
not acquainting myself with the subject I treated of in my lecture;
he has manifestly not troubled to acquaint himself with that
lecture. The ignorance--at any rate, the omissions--that he lays to
my door do not exist. Did he expect me in the course of a short
hour's lecture to a general audience--which was certainly not
prepared for any history or technicalities--to bring forward in my
opening sentences the whole st