k"--A
Night at the Dinner--From Mr. Henry Silver's Diary--Loyalty and
Perseverance of Diners--Charles H. Bennett and the _Jeu
d'esprit_--Keene Holds Aloof--Business--Evolution of the
Cartoon--Honours Divided--Guests--Special Dinners, "Jubilee,"
"Thackeray," "Burnand," and "Tenniel"--Dinners to _Punch_--The
_Punch_ Club--Exit Albert Smith--High Spirits--"The Whistling
Oyster"--Baylis as a Prophet--"Two Pins Club."

Among the Parliaments of Wits and the Conclaves of Humorists the weekly
convention known as "the _Punch_ Dinner" holds highest rank, if
importance is to be judged by results and pre-eminence by renown. For
three-and-fifty years have these illustrious functions been held, fifty
to the year. And those two thousand six hundred and fifty meals mark
off, week by week, the progress of English humour during the Victorian
era--not the humour of literature alone, but the humour, as well as the
technical excellence, of one of the noblest and most vigorous and
delightful of all the sections of English art.

This solemn festivity, therefore, has a solid claim to being included
among the scenes of English artist-life. If it be conceded, as I think
it must, that _Punch_ has been for half a century an effective, even a
glorious, school of art--of drawing in black-and-white and of
wood-cutting alike--it follows that the weekly repast which has helped
to bring these things about claims attention and respect among the Diets
of the world, and demands a first place in virtue of public service and
by right of artistic performance.

But it is not in the spirit nor with the fashionable view of the Royal
Academicians and their imposing banquet that the members of the _Punch_
staff hold their weekly junket. "We English," said Douglas Jerrold,
"would dine to celebrate the engulfing of England." Yet if "the
Punchites" share the feeling of old Timon that "we must dine together,"
it is neither for purposes of self-congratulation, nor yet of
hospitality. Though good-fellowship is near the genesis of the
institution, work and serious aim are at the root of it all, and in the
midst of all the merry-making are never for a moment forgotten.

Nevertheless, conviviality, you may be sure, counted for something in
the arrangement when Queen Victoria's reign was young. Clubs there were
not a few about Fleet Street and the Strand, where the men who founded
_Punch_, and their friends and enemies alike in simil