Mr. John Hollingshead--"Practical John"--was dramatic critic of
the "Daily News." His notices attracted the attention of Shirley Brooks,
with the result that he was invited to contribute to _Punch_. But it was
in 1881 that he was taken on the salaried outside Staff, writing for the
paper for several years, chiefly on the subject of social reform. He is
the inventor, to whom Londoners should be grateful, of "Mud-Salad
Market" and the "Duke of Mudford;" and the "Gates of Gloomsbury," "The
Seldom-at-Home Secretary," and "The Top of the Gaymarket," are also his.
It was with his pen that _Punch_ attacked so lustily our licensing
system--or want of system; and from him, too, came the burlesque
"Schopenhauer Ballads," and other contributions, which, many of them,
have been reprinted in "Footlights," "Plain English," and "Niagara
Spray."

In the same year came Mr. R. F. Sketchley, late Librarian of the Dyce
and Forster collection in the South Kensington Museum, who was destined
to become one of _Punch's_ Staff officers. "I find," he writes, "that I
became a contributor to _Punch_ in 1864. At the beginning of 1868 I was
honoured with an invitation from Mark Lemon to join the Table. I served
also under his successors--Shirley Brooks, Tom Taylor, and Burnand; and
finally retired of my own accord in 1880. I have seen it stated that in
an illness of Shirley Brooks I did some of the 'Essence of Parliament.'
If I had been called on to take up the pen of that most brilliant man of
letters, I should have been in despair. All I did was to turn the
Queen's Speech on the opening of Parliament into verse.

[Illustration: R. F. SKETCHLEY.
(_From a Photograph by Hills and Saunders, Oxford._)]

"I was never a prominent member of the Staff, but I am, and always shall
be, proud of having been connected with _Punch_. I wrote both prose and
verse--more of the former than the latter--and my contributions ranged
in extent from a column down to a single line. My subjects were
generally 'topical,' sometimes 'imaginary,' and the verse included a
good many parodies." Mr. Sketchley, it should be observed, is one of the
few members of the inside Staff--at least, within the last forty
years--who have ever resigned their appointments, Richard Doyle, Mr.
Henry Silver, and Mr. Harry Furniss being the others. His strong point
was prose parody, the best, perhaps, being the quaint quasi-Gulliverian
sketch called "A Fortnight in Sparsandria," which he contribut