unch's own heart and interest.

It is because Mr. Partridge's love for the stage is stronger than for
the pencil that the invitation to contribute to _Punch_, and, in 1892,
his promotion to the regular Staff, did not arouse in him any great
enthusiasm at the time. Soon, however, he warmed up to his work, and his
illustrations to Mr. Anstey's inimitable "Voces Populi," "The Man from
Blankley's," and other of that writer's serials, made their mark at
once, supported as they were by the "socials," signed now with his
cipher, now with his quaint "Perdix fecit."

Concurrently with Mr. Partridge (1891), Mr. Everard Hopkins made his
appearance with one of two drawings sent in. The accepted one was an
admirable travesty of the _denouement_ of Ibsen's "Doll's House,"
representing a buxom middle-aged virago leaving the house of her
diminutive hen-pecked husband, whose "birdie" she declines any longer to
be. Numerous drawings of a graceful kind have since come from him, until
he is in the way of being regarded as a recognised outside contributor.

Then followed Mr. Reginald Cleaver, whose work, somewhat hard, but of
great beauty in its own line, has been devoted to "social" subjects; and
on January 1st, 1892, Mr. W. J. Hodgson sent in a picture that was
destined to be the first of a long series. He is essentially a sporting
man--a vital necessity for _Punch_--and having been brought up in the
thick of the sporting world, has immortalised in his pages many a
hunting joke and scrap of "horsey" humour. His subjects are usually
actualities, and more than once has a whole countryside been startled
by the appearance in _Punch_ of an incident that had just formed matter
for gleeful conversation after a day's sport. Such was the amusing
otter-hunt story that appeared in July, 1894, in which, under the title
of "The Course of True Love, etc.," Miss Di, a six-foot damsel, asks her
five-foot-three curate-lover to pick her up and carry her across the
watercourse, "as it is rather deep, don't you know;" and the Wiltshire
village where it occurred and the chief actors in the little comedy
became at once the talk of the county, and the water itself is pointed
out as the scene of the incident. Mr. Hodgson, it may be noted, was
introduced to _Punch_ through Sir Frank Lockwood, who sent to the Editor
a volume which the draughtsman had illustrated.

Miss Maud Sambourne, when no more than eighteen years of age, also
contributed her first drawing i