title is: "Master Humphrey's Clock."

Now, among other improvements, I have turned my attention to the
illustrations, meaning to have woodcuts dropped into the text and no
separate plates. I want to know whether you would object to make me a
little sketch for a woodcut--in indian-ink would be quite
sufficient--about the size of the enclosed scrap; the subject, an old
quaint room with antique Elizabethan furniture, and in the
chimney-corner an extraordinary old clock--the clock belonging to Master
Humphrey, in fact, and no figures. This I should drop into the text at
the head of my opening page.

I want to know besides--as Chapman and Hall are my partners in the
matter, there need be no delicacy about my asking or your answering the
question--what would be your charge for such a thing, and whether (if
the work answers our expectations) you would like to repeat the joke at
regular intervals, and, if so, on what terms? I should tell you that I
intend to ask Maclise to join me likewise, and that the copying the
drawing on wood and the cutting will be done in first-rate style. We are
justified by past experience in supposing that the sale would be
enormous, and the popularity very great; and when I explain to you the
notes I have in my head, I think you will see that it opens a vast
number of very good subjects.

I want to talk the matter over with you, and wish you would fix your
own time and place--either here or at your house or at the Athenaeum,
though this would be the best place, because I have my papers about me.
If you would take a chop with me, for instance, on Tuesday or Wednesday,
I could tell you more in two minutes than in twenty letters, albeit I
have endeavoured to make this as businesslike and stupid as need be.

Of course all these tremendous arrangements are as yet a profound
secret, or there would be fifty Humphreys in the field. So write me a
line like a worthy gentleman, and convey my best remembrances to your
worthy lady.

Believe me always, my dear Cattermole,
Faithfully yours.

[Sidenote: Mr. George Cattermole.]

DEVONSHIRE TERRACE, _Tuesday Afternoon._

MY DEAR CATTERMOLE,

I think the drawing most famous, and so do the publishers, to whom I
sent it to-day. If Browne should suggest anything for the future which
may enable him to do you justice in copying (on which point he is ver