za," otherwise known as Lady Wilde.

In the newspaper shop windows--always an attraction to me--the coloured
portrait of Garibaldi was fly-blown, the pictures of the great fight
between Sayers and Heenan were illustrations of ancient history, and in
the year I was born _Punch_ published his twenty-sixth volume.

[Illustration: HARRY FURNISS, AGED 10.]

Leaving Wexford before the railway there was opened, my parents removed
to the metropolis of Ireland, and I went to school in Dublin at the age
of twelve. It was at the Wesleyan Connexional School, now known as the
Wesleyan College, St. Stephen's Green, that I struggled through my first
pages of Caesar and stumbled over the "pons asinorum," and here I must
mention that although the Wesleyan College bears the name of the great
religious reformer, a considerable number of the boys who studied
there--myself included--were in no way connected with the Wesleyan body.
I merely say this because I have seen it stated more than once that I am
a Wesleyan, and as this little sketch professes to be an authentic
account of myself, I wish it to be correct, however trivial my remarks
may seem to the general reader. It is in the same spirit that I have
disclaimed the honour of being an Irishman.

Once upon a time, when I was a very little boy, I remember being very
much impressed by a heading in my copybook which ran: "He who can learn
to write, can learn to draw." Now this was putting the cart before the
horse, so far as my experience had gone, for I could most certainly draw
before I could write, and had not only become an editor long before I
was fit to be a contributor, but was also a publisher before I had even
seen a printing press. In fact, I was but a little urchin in
knickerbockers when I brought out a periodical--in MS. it is true--of
which the ambitious title was "The Schoolboys' _Punch._" The ingenuous
simplicity with which I am universally credited by all who know me now
had not then, I fancy, obtained complete possession of me. I must have
been artful, designing, diplomatic, almost Machiavellian; for anxious to
curry favour with the head master of my school, I resolved to use the
columns of "The Schoolboys' _Punch_" not so much in the interest of the
schoolboy world as to attract the head master's favourable notice to the
editor.

Accordingly, the first cartoon I drew for the paper was specially
designed with this purpose in view, and I need scarcely say it was
highly