Dublin, at the age of nineteen. Since
then I have never utilised one of my gravers, except to pick a lock or
open a box of sardines. Nor is this to be wondered at, considering that
one can make a drawing in an hour which takes a week to engrave, and
that an engraver may take five guineas for his share of the work whilst
an artist may get fifty. There is very little doubt, therefore, as to
the reason why artists who can draw refrain from engraving their own
work.

[Illustration: SKETCHES IN GALWAY.
_Republished by permission of the proprietors of the "Illustrated London
News."_]

In the studio of the engraver to whom I have above referred there hung a
huge map of London, and as I used to pore over it I took many an
imaginary walk down Fleet Street, many a canter in the Row, and many a
voyage to Greenwich on a penny steamboat, before I bade adieu to "dear
dirty Dublin" in the year 1873, and, as many have done before me,
arrived in the "little village" in search of fame and wealth.

Just prior to my leaving Ireland for the land of my parents I met no
less an editor than Tom Taylor, who was then the presiding genius of the
_Punch_ table, and he gave me every encouragement to hasten my
migration. He, however, had just returned from the wilds of Connemara,
and before setting my face in the direction of Holyhead he strongly
advised me also to pay a visit to the trackless wastes of the Western
country, for the purpose of committing to paper the lineaments of the
natives indigenous to the soil. This I did a week or so before quitting
the land of my birth, and the sketches I made upon that occasion formed
part of my stock-in-trade when I arrived in London.

After making the accompanying page of studies, I strolled along the bank
of the river; and while sketching some men breaking stones an incident
happened which first aroused me to the fact that the lot of the
sketching artist is not always a happy one. A fiend in human shape--an
overbearing overseer--came up at the moment, and roundly abused the
poor labourers for taking the "base Saxon's" coin. Inciting them to
believe that I was a special informer from London, he laughed on my
declaring that I was merely a novice, and informed me that I ought to be
"dhrounded." He was about to suit the action to the word and pitch me
into the salmon-stuffed river when he was stopped by the mediation of my
models, and I escaped from the grip of the agitator. In due course I
found myself