of the table. "What do
you say to this, nearly killing my friend Harry Furniss!" And my
caricature was produced and handed down from guest to guest, to the
chagrin of the host. That was Lockwood's version of the coincidence.

[Illustration: LEWIS CARROLL'S SUGGESTION, AND MY SKETCH OF IT IN
_PUNCH_.]

Suggestions for _Punch_ came to me from most unexpected quarters, but
were rarely of any use. Lewis Carroll--like every one else--got excited
over the Gladstonian crisis, and Sir William Harcourt's head to Lewis
Carroll was much the same as Charles the First's to Mr. Dick in "David
Copperfield," for I find in several letters references to Sir William.

"_Re_ Gladstone's head and its recent growth, couldn't you make a
picture of it for the 'Essence of Parliament'? I would call it 'Toby's
Dream of A.D. 1900,' and have Gladstone addressing the House, with his
enormous head supported by Harcourt on one side, and Parnell on the
other."

This suggestion is the only one I adopted. Strange to say, neither
Gladstone, Parnell, nor Lewis Carroll lived to see 1900.

"Is that anecdote in the papers _true_, that some one has sent you a
pebble with an accidental (and not a 'doctored') likeness of Harcourt?
If so, let me suggest that your most _graceful_ course of action will be
to have it photographed, and to present prints of it to any authors
whose books you may at any time chance to illustrate!"

This is the "anecdote":

"Someone found on the seashore the other day a pebble moulded exactly on
the lines of Mr. Furniss' portrait of Sir William Harcourt."

Other notices were in verse. This from _Vanity Fair_ is the best:

"For Fame, 'tis said, Sir William craves,
And to some purpose he has sought her;
His face is fashioned by the waves:
When will his name be 'writ in water'?"

I lay under a charge of plagiarism. Nature had "invented" my Harcourt
portrait, and had been at work upon it probably before I was born; the
wild waves had by degrees moulded a shell into the familiar features,
and when completed had left the sea-sculptured sketch high and dry on
the coast. I now publish, with thanks, a photo-reproduction of the shell
(not a pebble) as I received it: it is not in any way "doctored." It is
a large, weather-beaten shell.

[Illustration: NATURE'S PUZZLE PORTRAIT.]

There is no doubt but that at one time Lewis Carroll studied _Punch_,
for in one of his earliest letters