vered each day at the office, though witticisms
found among the wilderness of suggestions were desperately few, "do you
_never_ get anything good?" "Oh, sometimes--occasionally." "Then,"
drawled the other, "_why don't you ever put one of them in?_"

"A Hot Chestnut" (p. 143, Vol. XLIX.) was the first contribution of G.
B. Goddard, well known a little later on as Bouverie Goddard, the
animal-painter. Oil-colour was in truth his medium; but his drawings
were good, and _Punch_ for a couple of years rejoiced in his new hunting
draughtsman. Goddard was a great friend of Charles Keene, with whom he
shared for a time a studio in Baker Street; but feeling that he must
paint pictures rather than draw upon the wood-block, he left the paper,
after placing to his credit fourteen drawings--of which some were
adjudged to contain the best horses seen in its pages since the death of
Leech.

By far the most important lady artist who ever worked for _Punch_ was
Miss Georgina Bowers (for some years now Mrs. Bowers-Edwards).[63] It is
not usual, as I have remarked before, to find a woman a professional
humorist, though a colonial _Punch_ is edited by a lady; but it is, I
believe, an undoubted fact, that up to this year of grace no female
caricaturist has yet appeared before man's vision. But Miss Bowers was a
humorist, with very clear and happy notions as to what fun should be,
and how it should be transferred to a picture. Her long career began in
1866, and thenceforward, working with undiminished energy, she executed
hundreds of initials and vignettes as well as "socials," devoting
herself in chief part to hunting and flirting subjects. She was a facile
designer, but her manner was chronically weak. It was John Leech who set
her on the track; Mark Lemon, to whom she took her drawings, encouraged
her, and with help from Mr. Swain she progressed.

[Illustration: MRS. BOWERS-EDWARDS.

(_From a Photograph by S. A. Walker._)]

"My first published drawing," Miss Bowers tells me, "was a dreadful
thing of a girl urging a muff of a man to give her a lead at a brook. My
'jokes' all came from incidents I saw out hunting, and from my own
varied adventures with horse and hound; but occasionally a suggestion
sent to the Editor was transferred to me to be put into shape. Then some
one else wrote up to them. When I first hunted in Hertfordshire, I had
great opportunities for provincial sporting studies. I feel now that
some of my subjects were too