From Millais he had many a joke; and when the two close friends were
separated, the former would send him sketches of the idea. Several of
these Leech left behind him, having only taken advantage of two--the
protection that plaid is supposed to afford in the Highlands, when the
unhappy novice who puts it on wrestles with it in a high wind; and the
device of a couple of artists for defying the Scotch midges--a comic,
balloon-like envelope for the head. From Dean Hole came that immortal
joke of the yokel at a great country dinner, who on tossing off his
liqueur-glass of Curacoa, the first he has ever tasted, calls to the
waiter that he'll "tak' some o' that in a moog;" and it was from a
passage in one of the Dean's letters to the effect that in a long run he
had only had three mishaps on his promising young chestnut, that Leech
invented the drawing of "A Contented Mind"--wherein the mud-bespattered
young hopeful has increased the number of falls to five. And he loved to
watch the sons of his colleague, Gilbert Abbott a Beckett--both of them
in due time called to the Table--and to base upon the mischievous
adventures and the characteristic invention of the young pickles many a
laughable drawing. They were the originals of the boys who, with a
ten-and-sixpenny box of tools and a sufficiency of nails, in the absence
of their parents put the furniture of the house in a state of thorough
repair!! And on a skating experience of one of them--Mr. Arthur a
Beckett--comes that well-known design of a youth at the mercy of a
skate-tout at the ice-edge. "Look out!" he cries; "_you_ are running the
gimlet into my heel!" "Never mind, sir," responds the man, persuasively;
"_better 'ave 'em on firm!_"

From Charles Dickens, from Mr. Frith, Mr. Holman Hunt, and Mr. Horsley,
R.A., Leech also accepted happy thoughts; and from an "Eton boy," the
smart reply of a belle of a ballroom to the young Oxford man who
"couldn't get on there without women's society"--"Pity you don't go to
a girls' school, then!" The Eton boy claimed and received remuneration,
to the amount of a couple of guineas, which came out of Leech's generous
pocket, accompanied by a present and good counsel--a form of
acknowledgment, however, which was "not to be taken as a precedent."
Sometimes, too, Leech would re-draw or touch up sketches of good jokes
sent in by outsiders; but on such occasions he, according to the usual
practice of the _Punch_ men, never signed the drawing