ne the subject for his first _Punch_ drawing
just three years later.

[Illustration: CARTOON ENTITLED "THE POLITICAL PAS DE QUATRE."

(_Drawn by John Leech. From "Punch," 2nd August,1845._)]

But, apart from charges of direct plagiarism, "The Man in the Moon"
certainly anticipated _Punch_ in some of his well-known cuts. The
"Patent Railway-Director Buffer," which consisted in the tying of a
railway director on the front of the locomotive, was certainly the
"Moon's" invention in February, 1847. In March, 1853, Leech showed the
world in his cartoon "How to Ensure against Railway Accidents," by
lashing a director across the engine _a la Mazeppa_; and as late as 1857
(p. 24, Vol. XXXIII.) Sir John Tenniel showed a "Patent Railway Safety
Buffer" precisely similar to the original device. Again, in "The Man in
the Moon" (January, 1848) the little joke--_Park-keeper (St. James's
Park):_ "You can't come in!" _Boy:_ "Vot do yer mean? Ain't it us as keeps
yer?"--is surely related to Sir John Tenniel's cut (p. 181, Vol. XXXII.,
1857), in which a delightful Hodge gazes open-mouthed at the sentry at
the Horse Guards, and replies, when asked what he's staring at, "Wy
shouldn't I stare? I pays vor yer!"

The "Puppet Show," too, kept up a running fire at _Punch_, and delighted
in retorting upon his charge of "picking and stealing" by printing their
jokes and his alleged belated ones in parallel columns. Among the
pictures, too, the "Puppet Show"-man was sometimes first, as in the
sketch of the fat old lady who enters an omnibus and, sitting down
promiscuously somewhere between two gentlemen, says, "Don't disturb
yourselves; I'll shake down"--an idea textually repeated in _Punch_ in
1864 by Mr. Fred Barnard. The "Puppet Show" (1848) is also to be
remembered for its joke of the choleric old gentleman, indignant at the
delay of an omnibus in which he has taken his seat, crying impatiently
to the conductor, "_Is_ this omnibus going on?" and being quietly
answered, "No, sir; it's stopping perfectly still"--a joke illustrated
by Mr. du Maurier in _Punch_ for 1871 (p. 208, Vol. LXI.); and for the
picture of the City clerk in pink, who, surprised by his employer, is
accosted with the significant words, "So that's the costume you are
going to your uncle's funeral in?" Charles Keene used a similar joke
forty-one years later, only with time the festival had changed into that
of an aunt. In the "Showman's" pages, too, first appeared the Frenchma