ot exactly tally.'"

"But surely our guv'nor does not sketch direct from life?" asked the
Pen, amazed.

"Of course he does," indignantly replied the Pencil. "He whips me out of
my bed at all times, but as he pointed out to the Member for Northampton
(see how Parliamentary I am getting), it would never do invariably to
sketch a man as you see him. 'For instance,' went on H. F. addressing
him, 'I made a sketch of you, Mr. Labouchere, in the corridor of the
House of Commons, kneeling on a seat, and had I never seen you before, I
should have no doubt used this as a characteristic instead of an
accidental attitude of yours.'

"Just fancy what you would have written, my dear Pen, if you had seen in
_Punch_ one of H. F.'s portraits of Lord Hartington with his hat upon
the back of his head instead of over his eyes, or Mr. Gladstone depicted
with a Shakespeare collar, or Mr. Cyril Flower without one, or Mr.
Arnold Morley smiling, or Mr. Balfour looking cross, or Mr. Broadhurst
in evening dress, or Mr. Chamberlain without an orchid in the
button-hole of his coat! Yet I venture to say the time has been when Mr.
Chamberlain may have had to rush down to the House orchidless, and when
Mr. Broadhurst may have worn evening dress. Stranger things than that
have happened, I can tell you. I have actually seen the irrepressible
smile vanish from the face of Mr. John Morley. But never--no, never,
will I believe that the ex-Chief Liberal Whip has ever looked jovial,
that Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Cyril Flower ever exchanged collars, or that
Lord Hartington ever wore his hat at the back of his head.

[Illustration: MR. LABOUCHERE.]

"On the other hand, my dear Pen, you know as well as I do that Lord
Randolph Churchill did not wear imitation G.O.M. collars, that Mr.
Herbert Gladstone is no longer in his teens, that Mr. Gladstone was not
always so wild-looking as H. F. usually represented him, and that
perhaps Sir William Harcourt is not simply an elephantine mass of
egotism."

"Then why did he draw them so?" enquired the Pen.

"Ah! that is the secret of the caricaturist," laughed the Pencil. "There
is something more in politicians, you know, than meets the eye, and the
caricaturist tries to record it. You're so captious, my dear Pen. It is
not given to everyone to see a portrait properly, however true it may
be. Some folks there are who are colour-blind. There are others who are
portrait-blind. Others again are blind to the humorous. An ol