fact, there is no one of public
interest to be seen; probably they have not come, as to-day is to be a
half-holiday. It is now one o'clock, and the Bishops rise to go to the
Levee. I pounce upon Francis Jeune, Q.C., and gasp, "Where, oh, where is
the Bishop of Lincoln? Quick! I want to sketch him before he leaves."
"Oh, he's not here--never comes near the place!"

The play is over for the day. I have seen "Hamlet" with the Prince left
out.

CHAPTER IV.

THE CONFESSIONS OF AN ILLUSTRATOR--A SERIOUS CHAPTER.

Drawing--"Hieroglyphics"--Clerical Portraiture--A Commission from
General Booth--In Search of Truth--Sir Walter Besant--James Payn--Why
Theodore Hook was Melancholy--"Off with his Head"--Reformers'
Tree--Happy Thoughts--Christmas Story--Lewis Carroll--The Rev. Charles
Lutwidge Dodgson--Sir John Tenniel--The Challenge--Seven Years'
Labour--A Puzzle MS.--Dodgson on Dress--Carroll on Drawing--Sylvie and
Bruno--A Composite Picture--My Real Models--I am very Eccentric--My
"Romps"--A Letter from du Maurier--Caldecott--Tableaux--Fine
Feathers--Models--Fred Barnard--The Haystack--A Wicket Keeper--A Fair
Sitter--Neighbours--The Post-Office Jumble--Puzzling the
Postmen--Writing Backwards--A Coincidence.

[Illustration: If]

If I confess as a caricaturist, surely I need not caricature my
confessions by any mock-modesty. Although I have illustrated novels,
short stories, fairy tales, poems, parodies, satires, and _jeux
d'esprit_, for the realistic, the fanciful, the weirdly imaginative and
the broadly humorous, as my _Punch_ colleague, E. T. Milliken, wrote, my
more distinctive, natural and favourite _metier_ is that of graphic art.
This intimate friend, in publishing his "appreciation" of me, put in his
own too highly-coloured opinion of my black and white work in this
direction. I blush to quote it:

[Illustration: MAJUBA HILL. DRAWN BY HARRY FURNISS.
_Reproduced by permission of the proprietors of the "Illustrated
London News."_]

"And they are in error who imagine Mr. Furniss's powers to be
substantially limited to political satire or Parliamentary caricature.
Much of the work he has already given to the public, and perhaps more of
that which he has not yet published, but of which his chosen familiars
are aware, will prove that in more serious or imaginative work, in
strong, vivid realism as well as in frolic fancy, in landscape as well