_amende
honorable_ to the sex he had maligned. He was invited to take the chair
at a great public meeting held at Birmingham in his honour, when the
whole audience rose at him. He was asked to speak without fear, "as
there was no Mrs. Caudle in Birmingham." He responded that he "did not
believe that there was a Mrs. Caudle in the whole world," and the
gracefulness of his reference set him at peace with womankind once more.
In point of fact, he was no more pleased, artistically, with the success
of Mrs. Caudle among his books than he was pleased with the position of
"Black-eyed Susan" among his plays, as he was well aware that he had
done much better work in both branches. But for _Punch's_ sake he was
delighted. So after the death of Mrs. Caudle, which in decency could no
longer be delayed, Jerrold attempted to carry on the idea by marrying
the widower to the lady of whom his wife had been so jealous; so that
Mr. Caudle--his head turned by his new-born liberty--might, in the
"Breakfast Talk" levelled at his second spouse, avenge the oppression
he had suffered from his first. But the experiment, which took place in
the Almanac of the following year, fell flat, and Mr. and Mrs. Caudle,
too, dropped out of Mr. Punch's doll-box for good and all.

Then followed, in 1846, "_Punch's_ Complete Letter-writer," which in
consequence of the odium incurred a short time before by Sir James
Graham, the Home Secretary,[38] by the opening of certain letters while
they were passing through the post, Jerrold sarcastically dedicated to
the heckled baronet. He did this on the ground that Sir James, having
the whole run of the Post Office and the fingering of all the letters,
must therefore possess "a most refined, most exquisite taste for the
graces of epistolary composition," and could thoroughly appreciate them.
This was another version of Hood's lines--

"A daw's not reckon'd a religious bird
Because he keeps a-cawing from a steeple,"

and is the pattern on which Mr. Whistler's effort was founded--that the
mere company of pictures can impart no feeling or knowledge of art, else
the policeman in the National Gallery must be the best of critics. But
at this time better work of Jerrold's, "St. Giles's and St. James's,"
was appearing in his "Shilling Magazine" (newly started by Bradbury and
Evans), as well as in the "Daily News," under the title of the "Hedgehog
Papers;" while "Time Works Wonders" raised his reputation higher than
ev