when I mentioned
that Mr. Taylor had just returned from the wilds of Connemara and
strongly advised me to make some explorations in that little-known
district for the purpose of making sketches of the "genus _homo_
indigenous to the soil," which I did a week or so prior to my setting
foot in the busy haunt of men on murky Thames.

Tom Taylor was, I believe, one of the best of men, and the possessor of
one of the kindest hearts; but although he certainly professed to take
an interest in me (probably owing to the fact that it was to a relative
of mine that he was indebted for his first introduction to literature),
the fact remains that whenever I sent him a sketch I used to receive one
of his extraordinary hieroglyphical missives supposed to be a note
courteously declining my efforts, notwithstanding that I was often
flattered although not enriched by subsequently seeing the subjects of
them appear redrawn under another name in the pages of _Punch_.

It was not until Tom Taylor had passed away that Mr. Punch would deign
to give me a chance. I had then been seven years in London hard at work
for the leading magazines and illustrated papers, and I may truly say
that my work was the only introduction I ever had to Mr. Burnand.

[Illustration: Age 26, WHEN I FIRST WORKED FOR PUNCH. [_From a Photo by
C. Watkins._]]

When I first entered the goal of my boyish ambition--that is to say, the
editorial sanctum of Mr. Punch--I had never met the gentleman who for a
number of years afterwards was destined to be my chief, and I fully
expected to see the editor turn round and receive me with that look of
irrepressible humour and in that habitually jocose style which I had so
often heard described. I looked in vain for the geniality in the
editor's glance, and there was a remarkably complete absence of the
jocose in the sharp, irritable words which he addressed to me.

"Really," said he, "this is too bad! I wrote to you to meet me at the
Surrey Theatre last night, and you never turned up. We go to press
to-day, and the sketches are not even made."

"I don't quite understand you," I replied, "for I never heard from you
in my life, and I don't think that you ever saw me before."

"But surely you are Mr. ----?" (a contributor who had been drawing for
_Punch_ for some weeks). "Are you not?"

"No," I said. "My name is Furniss, and I understood that you wanted to
see me."

[Illustration: MY FIRST MEETING WITH THE EDITOR OF _PUNCH_.]