m could have been sustained against him.

[Illustration: FROM CHARLES KEENE TO HIS EDITOR.]

But his sorest point against _Punch_--to which, after all, he was
sincerely attached--was not the alteration, but the total suppression of
some of his work. Two such cases are duly recorded by Mr. Layard--both
of them admirable jokes in their way, though perhaps of questionable
taste. The first deals with a "Bereaved Husband's" opposition to the
"Sympathetic Undertaker's" remorseless insistence that the chief mourner
should enter the first carriage with his mother-in-law. "Ah! well," he
sighs, with resignation; "_but it will completely spoil my day!_"

The second story--to which an excellent drawing was made--tells of a
widow who looks with sorrowful resignation upon a portrait of her
husband that hangs above the fireplace, and says to her sympathising
friend: "But why should I grieve, dear? I know where he passes his
evenings now!" The first of these Mark Lemon--ever anxious to avoid
giving offence--declined on the ground that it was too hard upon
mothers-in-law; and the second because, in Keene's own words, "Our
Philistine Editor ... said it would 'jar upon feelings'!" He surely
could not have borne completer testimony to the care, the ultra-respect
for others' sentiments, which has usually distinguished _Punch_, to the
disgust of critics of less refinement and consideration.

On another point, too, he was not at one with _Punch_, and that was
"Toby." The form and face of Mr. Punch, as rendered by him, was hardly a
classic rendering; but this was forgiven him. But Keene's Toby was
neither the cur represented by some, nor the Irish terrier affected by
others, but a _dachshund_! And he persisted in so drawing him to the
end, not because he thought it right, but because "it _might_ have
been!" and because the original of the beast was his own much-loved pet
"Frau," which he survived not many days. (See next page.)

To this drawing particular interest attaches, for it is the very last
that ever came from his hand--a loving tribute to an old friend that had
passed away. Concerning it, Mr. Henry S. Keene writes to me: "The
history of the dog is shortly this. She was a favourite old dog of my
brother's, and has figured a good many times in his drawings as the dog
of the 'typical' _Punch_, and was of the breed of the 'dachshund.' She
was very old and full of infirmities, and my brother consented, with
some reluctance, to put the p