Committee over cigars and drinks and literary
talk and jokes, and Leech would rumble out in his splendid great bass
voice Barry Cornwall's "King Death." This was the only song of his which
his friends remember; and Ponny Mayhew would seek to emulate it with the
musical setting of Thackeray's "Mahogany Tree." He sang that song in
chorus, all upstanding, that sad Christmas Eve when Thackeray died,
among his friends of the Kensington coterie. He had brought in the fatal
news to the jovial party, and then, says Mr. Frederick Greenwood, he
proceeded: "I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll sing the dear old boy's
'Mahogany Tree;' he'd like it." "Accordingly we all stood up, and with
such memory of the words as each possessed ... and a catching of the
breath here and there by about all of us, the song was sung."

Then come the special _Punch_ dinners, official and otherwise. In 1863
there was the Shakespeare dinner, that was held to arrange the
Shakespeare Tercentenary number of _Punch_; and a quarter of a century
later there was the Paris junketting that resulted in the Paris
Exhibition number. Then there was the yearly festival celebrated by Sir
William Agnew, and the "Almanac Dinner," which was usually held about
the month of September--in olden times, from 1850 to 1885--always at the
"Bedford," but lately discontinued; and there is the Annual Dinner to
the printers and the rest given by the firm--the first of which, under
the name of "wayzgoose," took place at the "Highbury Barn Tavern." At
these entertainments the Staff would sometimes attend and fraternise
with printers and engravers, and would make a point of congratulating
those "wood-cutters" whose recent work had specially delighted them.

_Punch_ has always been strong on Jubilees, and his "boys" have done
their best to maintain them as a sacred tradition. On January 3rd, 1853,
Jerrold celebrated his fiftieth birthday with a dinner given to the
whole of his colleagues. Baily, the sculptor, was one of the "outside"
guests on the occasion, and was so charmed with the brilliancy and
jollity of the company that he offered, and in due time redeemed his
promise, to execute its hero's bust. That work, one of the finest of the
old Academician's portrait-busts, now, if I mistake not, belongs to the
nation's collection of its great men's portraits. On Wednesday, June
27th, 1866, the memorable picnic and dinner took place at Burnham
Beeches, to celebrate Mr. Punch's fiftieth vol