Birket Foster famous in the land.

[Illustration: MARK LEMON'S MONOGRAM, CUT ON THE _PUNCH_ TABLE.]

To-day a large--one might say an imposing--apartment on the first floor
looking upon the street is approached, as most front offices in London
City are approached, from a landing leading through an open office. Upon
the table are a water-jug and a couple of goblets of cheap and
distinctly unlovely Bohemian glass. A tobacco-box, hardly less ugly
(coeval, one would say, with the room itself), a snuff-box, and long
pipes serve to recall that respect for the past and for tradition which
is one of the most delightful, as it is one of the most successful,
elements in _Punch's_ composition. Here you may see Sir John Tenniel's
long churchwarden, with his initials marked upon it, and Charles Keene's
little pipe--for these two men would ever prefer a stem between their
teeth to a cigar-stump. Statuettes in plaster of John Leech and of
Thackeray, by Sir Edgar Boehm, as well as a bust of Douglas Jerrold,
decorate the mantelpiece or the dwarf-cupboard; and on the walls are
many frames of abiding interest.

[Illustration: PERCIVAL LEIGH'S MONOGRAM.]

Here you have the portraits of the four editors--that of Mark Lemon
painted by Fred Chester, son of his life-long friend George Chester, and
the likenesses of Shirley Brooks, Tom Taylor, and Mr. Burnand in
photography. The portraits of the Staff, taken by Bassano in 1891 at Mr.
William Agnew's request, to the number of fourteen or fifteen, hang
separately in their dark frames. The original of one of Tenniel's
Almanac designs; a masterly drawing, two feet long, by Keene, bought by
the late Mr. Bradbury at a sale--the (unused) cartoon of Disraeli
leading the principal financiers of the day in hats and frock-coats
across the Red Sea ("Come along, it's getting shallower"); the original
of Leech's celebrated "Mr. Punch's Fancy Ball," and a series of the
enlarged coloured prints of his hunting sketches; a caricature of Mr.
Furniss by Mr. Sambourne, made in Paris; another of Mr. Sambourne by Mr.
Furniss; and a third of Mr. Sambourne by himself; a caricature in
pen-and-ink and colour of the _Punch_ Staff marching along in Paris, by
Mr. Furniss; a black-and-white sketch by the same artist of the same
distinguished company in the train on the return journey; and another
souvenir of the Paris trip by Mr. du Maurier, including the portraits of
himself, Mr. Burnand, Mr. Arthur a Beckett, and Mr. W