to me he writes:

"To the best of my recollection, one of the first things that suggested
to me the wish to secure your help was a marvellously successful picture
in _Punch_ of a House of Lords entirely composed of Harcourts, where the
figures took all possible attitudes, and gave all possible views of the
face; yet each was a quite unmistakable Sir William Harcourt!"

Again he refers to _Punch_ (March, 1890):

"A wish has been expressed in our Common Room (Christ's Church, Oxford),
where we take in and bind _Punch_, that we could have 'keys' to the
portraits in the Bishop of Lincoln's Trial and the 'ciphers' in
Parliament" (a Parliamentary design of mine, "The House all Sixes and
Sevens"). "Will you confer that favour on our Club? If you would give me
them done roughly, I will procure copies of those two numbers, and
subscribe the names in small MS. print, and have the pages bound in to
face the pictures. The simplest way would be for you to put numbers on
the faces, and send a list of names numbered to correspond."

Yet a few years brought a change (October, 1894):

"No doubt it is by your direction that three numbers of your new
periodical have come to me. With many thanks for your kind thought, I
will beg you not to waste your bounties on so unfit a recipient, for I
have neither time nor taste for any such literature. I have much more
work yet to do than I am likely to have life to do it in--and my taste
for comic papers is _defunct_. We take in _Punch_ in our Common Room,
but I never look at it!"

Hardly a generous remark to make to a _Punch_ man who had illustrated
two of his books, and considering that Sir John Tenniel had done so much
to make the author's reputation, and _Punch_ had always been so
friendly; but this is a bygone.

PUNCH AT PLAY.

[Illustration: W]

Well, Sir John, the Grand Old Man of _Punch_, the evergreen, the
ever-delightful Sir John, has earned a night's repose after all his long
day of glorious work and good-fellowship. "A great artist and a great
gentleman": truer words were never spoken. It seems but yesterday he and
I took our rides together; but yesterday he and I and poor
Milliken--three _Punch_ men in a boat--were "squaring up" at Cookham
after a week's delightful boating holiday on the Thames.

[Illustration]

"There sat three oarsmen under a tree,
Down, a-down, a-down--hey down!
Th