Then the block was squared as well as its shape permitted, and when its
surface had been properly prepared, it was ready for the artist.

As I find myself discussing technical details in _Punch_ production, it
may be well to go a step further, for such matters can hardly fail to
interest the reader. The cartoon, for reasons of economy of time, has
always, up to 1893, been drawn upon the wood[28]--not upon paper, as has
been possible to the rest of the Staff for a good many years past--and
is delivered into Mr. Swain's hands by Friday night. Twenty-four hours
later the engraving of the block is completed, and it is handed over to
the printers, who are already clamouring for it to be put in their
formes--for there is no time to electrotype it, nor of course to
stereotype the pages. Stereotyping, indeed, has been the latest of the
innovations on _Punch_--an innovation to be reckoned but a year or two
old--for _Punch_, in his own house at least, is a Conservative among
Conservatives. What was always present in the publisher's mind was that
the "foreign edition" had to be ready printed off by Monday morning, and
every moment was necessarily grudged during which the machines were not
running--even those few short minutes when a sheet or two of the paper,
at first starting, were taken to Mr. Swain to be judged as to the
printing of the cuts, or as to whether they wanted a little more
"colour," or a little pressure taken off. "To myself," Mr. Swain tells
me, "it has always been a pleasing reflection that during the whole time
of my connection with _Punch_, extending over fifty years, I have never
once failed to get my work done in time and without accident. Of course,
now and again it has been a very near thing, but it has always been done
somehow."

It has ever been matter for surprise to outsiders that the conductors of
the journal could tempt Fate so recklessly as to put the original
wood-blocks on the machines. As has been seen, there was no
alternative. But the fact remains that they ran a continual risk for
fifty years which no other journal would care to face for a single week;
for an accident to a single block (and such accidents are all too
common) would have jeopardised the whole week's edition, as no other
original existed (as it exists nowadays) from which the damaged block
might be reproduced, or by which it might be superseded.

So it was only after the printing of an edition that the blocks were
electrotyped. I