ore were forthcoming.

Finding the telephone was no use, I was soon in a hansom bound for the
City, intending by hook or by crook to bring back with me the
much-needed catalogues, or the body of the printer dead or alive. Upon
arriving in the City, however, to my chagrin I found his place of
business closed, though the caretaker, with a touch of fiendish
malignity, showed me through a window whole piles of my non-delivered
catalogues. Not to be beaten, I hastened back to the West End and
despatched a very long and explicit telegram to the printer at his
private house (of course he would not be back in the City until Monday),
requiring him, under pain of various severe penalties, to yield up my
catalogues instanter. As I stood in the post office of Burlington House
anxiously penning this message, and harassed into a state of almost
feverish excitement, the sounds of martial music and the tramp of armed
men in the adjacent courtyard fell upon my distracted ear. With a sickly
and sardonic smile upon my face I laid down the pen and peeped through
the door.

"Yes! I see it all now," I muttered. "The whole thing is a plant. The
printer was bribed, and, _coute que coute_, the Academy has decided to
take my body! Hence the presence of the military; and see, those
cooks--what are they doing here in their white caps? My body! Ha! then
nothing short of cannibalism is intended!"

This frightful thought almost precipitated me into the very ranks of the
soldiery, when I discovered that the corps was none other than that of
the Artist Volunteers, which contains several of my friends. Seizing one
of those whom I chanced to recognise, I hurriedly whispered in his ear
the thoughts of impending butchery which were passing in my terrified
mind. But he only laughed. "You will disturb their digestions, my dear
Furniss, some other way," he said, "than by providing them with a _piece
de resistance_. Make your mind easy, for we are only here to do honour
to the guests. This is the banqueting night of the Royal Academy."

From what I heard, some amusing incidents occurred in the house at my
"Royal Academy."

[Illustration: "AN ARTISTIC JOKE."

_A portion of my parody of the work of Sir Alma Tadema, R.A._]

It was no uncommon sight to see the friends and relatives, even the sons
and daughters, of certain well-known Academicians standing opposite the
parody of a particular picture, and hugely enjoying it at the expense of
the parent or fri