e care he took to obtain good
and original jokes was conscientious in the extreme, he over and over
again re-drew his own and other people's drolleries. The British
grumble of the British farmer who under no circumstances can be appeased
or contented was typified by Leech in a picture wherein the farmer was
represented as looking at a splendid field of heavy golden corn (p. 96,
Vol. XXVII, 1854), but was not satisfied even then. "Ah!" he grumbles,
"see what it'll cost me to get it in!" The idea tickled Keene so greatly
when he heard it that, entirely unmindful of Leech's page, he made a
drawing of the same subject on p. 268 of the first volume for 1878; and
then, forgetting all about it, eleven years later (p. 35 of the second
volume for 1889) he actually did it all over again!

"What do you mean by coming home at this time of night?" asks an
indignant wife of her tipsy husband. "My dear," replies the prodigal,
with a generous attempt at candour and conciliation, "all other places
shu'rup!" Keene drew this admirably in 1871 (p. 71, Vol. LXI), and Mr.
du Maurier most delightfully again in 1883 (p. 14, Vol. LXXXIV.). These
and many more examples of unconscious receptivity and reproduction by
professional humorists will strike the attentive reader of _Punch's_
pages. He will see how to both Leech and Mr. Ralston occurred the idea
of an over-dressed vulgarian in morning clothes protesting in angry
dismay against the opera-house officials' suggestion that he is
not in "full dress;" how both Miss Georgina Bowers (1870) and
Mr. du Maurier were tickled by the retort to the economical dictum
that it is extravagant to have both butter and jam on a slice of
bread--"Extravagant? _Economical!_--same piece of bread does for both!";
how "Childe Chappie's Pilgrimage" of our day was preceded by "Child
Snobson's Pilgrimage" of 1842; how Mr. du Maurier in November, 1888, and
again in the Almanac for 1895 repeated the joke of a husband declaring
that he would be "extremely annoyed" if in the event of his death his
wife did not invite certain of his particular friends to his funeral;
how Poe's "Bells" maintain their power to attract the parodist; how
curiously tempting to the punster is the idea of a bashful policeman in
the National Gallery being asked where "the fine new Constable is" (for
Mr. Burnand, Charles Keene, and Sir Frank Lockwood have all done it, in
the order indicated); and many other amusing slips of the sort. And he
must not