actical difficulties
which beset an artist who opens an Exhibition on his own account, and is
forced by circumstances to become his own "exploiteur." Men may have
worked with a more ambitious object, but certainly no man can ever have
worked harder than I did at this period. Outside work was pouring in, my
current _Punch_ work seemed to be increasing, but I never allowed
"Furniss's Folly" (as some good-natured friend called my Exhibition at
the moment) to interfere with it. I had only arranged with a "business
man" to take the actual "running" of the show off my hands, and he was
to have half the profits if there should happen to be any. At the
critical moment, when I was working night and day at my easel, when in
fact the "murther was out" and the date actually settled for the
"cracking" of my joke--in short, when I fondly imagined that all the
arrangements were made, I received a letter from my "business" friend
backing out of the affair, "as he doubted its success." Half-an-hour
after the receipt of this staggerer (I have never had time to reply to
it) I was dashing into Bond Street, where I quickly made all
arrangements for the hire of a gallery and the necessary printing,
engaged an advertising agent and staff, and myself saw after the
thousand and one things indispensable to an undertaking of this kind.
And all this extraneous worry continued to hamper my studio work until
the Exhibition was actually opened. Of course I had to make hurried
engagements at any price, and consequently bad ones for me. Every
householder is aware that should he change his abode he is surrounded in
his new home by a swarm of local tradespeople and others anxious to get
something out of him. Well, my experience upon entering the world of
"business," hitherto strange to me, was precisely the same. All sorts of
parasites try to fasten themselves on to you. Business houses regard you
as an amateur, and consequently you pay dearly for your experience. You
are not up to the tricks of the trade, and although you may not
generally be written down an ass, you must in your new vocation pay your
footing. It is therefore incumbent upon anyone entering the world of
trade for the first time to keep his wits very much about him.

The local habitation for my Exhibition, which upon the spur of the
moment I was fortunate enough to find in Bond Street, was called for
some inexplicable reason the Gainsborough Gallery, and thereby hangs a
tale. One afternoo