o, drawer after drawer--full of character
studies and work of a serious character done in all parts of the world.
These have never been given to the public. Should they ever be
published, Mr. Harry Furniss will at once be voted as serious and
dramatic an artist as he is an eminently refined yet outrageously
humorous caricaturist. He is a great reader--he once collected first
editions. We begin to talk seriously, when he suddenly closes the
portfolio with a bang, shuts up once more his hidden and unknown
talents, and hastens to inform you that he is a member of the Thirteen
Club--Irving and he were elected together--and believes in helping other
people to salt, dining thirteen on the thirteenth, with thirteen
courses, etc. Always passes under ladders, and swears by peacocks'
feathers.

We stand before the great easel in the middle of the room--though not
much work is done there. He prefers to work standing at a desk. He draws
all his pictures very large; they are studies from life. It prevents the
work from getting cramped. The same model has stood for all his
principal people for the last ten years, and he has a wardrobe of
artistic "props" big enough to fit out every member of the House of
Commons. He is a perfect business man. His ledger is a model book. Every
one of his pictures is numbered. In this book spaces are ruled off
for--Subject, Publisher, When delivered, Published, Price, When paid,
When drawing returned, Price of original, and What came of it. Humour by
no means knocks system out of a man. Look at the score of pigeon-holes
round the studio. As we are talking together now his secretary is
"typing off" his illustrated weekly letter which finds a place in the
_St. James's Budget_, _New York World_, _Weekly Scotsman_, _Yorkshire
Weekly Post_, _Liverpool Weekly Post_, _Nottinghamshire Guardian_,
_South Wales Daily News_, _East Anglian Times_, and in Australia, India,
the Cape, etc. He writes children's books and illustrates them. His
impressions of America are in course of preparation. There is his weekly
_Punch_ work; he is dodging about all over the country giving his unique
"Humours of Parliament" entertainment, and he found time to make some
special sketches for this little article.

[Illustration: _From a Drawing by Mr. Furniss._]

We sat down. Tea was brought in--he believes in two big breakfast cups
every afternoon--and with "Bogie," the Irish deerhound--so called owing
to his very solemn-looking cou