cter of the passing vehicle. "Any room?"
he asked. "Yes," replied the officer, with a grin, "we've kept a place
on purpose for you. Jump inside!" "What's the fare?" inquired the
humorist, a little "non-plushed," as Jeames expressed it, at the
unexpected retort. "Same as you had before--bread and water, and skilly
o' Sundays!" The joke duly appeared in _Punch_ after a long interval
(Vol. XLVI.), illustrated by Charles Keene, under the title of
"Frightful Levity."

Another omnibus story, printed just as it occurred, was that in which a
conductor replies to an old gentleman in the south of London, whose
destination was the "Elephant and Castle." "Yus--you go on to the
Circus, and change into a Helephant." "Oh, mamma!" exclaims a little
girl seated near the door, "do let's go too!" "Go where?" "To the
circus, and see the old gentleman change into an elephant!" A similar
incident, it may be observed, was illustrated by Eltze's pencil in 1861,
when a passenger in the "Highbury Bus" asks the conductor to "change
him into a Hangel." Jack Harris has often appeared in _Punch_. He was a
driver beside whom Mr. Edmund Yates often rode--"a wonderfully humorous
fellow, whose queer views of the world and real native wit afforded me
the greatest amusement. A dozen of the best omnibus sketches were
founded on scenes which had occurred with this fellow, and which I
described to John Leech, whose usually grave face would light up as he
listened, and who would reproduce them with inimitable fun."

The horrified swell of Leech's who is implored by an onion-hawker to
"take the last rope" was in reality his friend Mr. Horsley, R.A., by
whom the artist was provided with a number of humorous subjects. The
unfailing advantage taken by Leech of all such contributions, which his
friends assured him were "not copyright," has been universally
recognised. Among the subjects suggested to him by Dean Hole was that in
which his coachman, "unaccustomed to act as waiter, watched, with great
agony of mind, the jelly which he bore swaying to and fro, and set it
down upon the table with a gentle remonstrance of 'Who--a, who--a,
who--a,' as though it were a restive horse." By a curious coincidence,
as I have heard from the lips of a member of one of the great brewing
firms, on the very day before the appearance of Mr. du Maurier's
drawing[14] the identical incident had occurred in his own house, and it
was hard to believe on the following morning that the sub