interest
belonging to a personal recollection.

"In the summer of 1845," he says, "Mr. Disraeli took the chair at the
annual dinner of the 'Printers' Pension Society,' when the stewards, of
whom I was one, received him in the drawing-room of the 'Albion,' in
Aldersgate Street. Immediately after his entrance he posted himself in a
nonchalant fashion with his back to the mantelpiece, and his thumbs in
his waistcoat pockets, an attitude Thackeray was fond of assuming, and
began to chat familiarly with those near him. In a minute or two he
asked if Mr. Leech was present (Leech was one of the stewards), as if he
would like to make his acquaintance. The famous _Punch_ caricaturist
thereupon stepped forward, and was duly introduced. Disraeli showed
himself particularly gracious, and warmly congratulated the artist,
whose pencil had lately been employed in satirising him in a
disparaging fashion, depicting him as a nice young man for a small
party, _i.e._ the Young England party, as a Jew dealer in cast-off
notions, and as a young Gulliver before the Brobdingnag Minister (Sir R.
Peel). Disraeli tried his hardest to ingratiate himself with the
distinguished caricaturist, but Leech, proof against the wiles of the
charmer, rejoined some months afterwards with the famous cartoon wherein
Disraeli, who had lately proclaimed that, although the cause was lost,
there should be some retribution for those who betrayed it, figured as a
spiteful ringletted viper, and Peel as a smiling unconcerned old file.

"During the dinner the chairman did his best to make himself pleasant,
and hobbed and nobbed unreservedly with his immediate neighbours....
When the toasts had been drunk and the secretary had read out the list
of subscriptions and the quiet family-men had hurried off to catch the
last suburban omnibus, Mr. Disraeli showed no disposition to vacate the
chair. Seeing this, the remaining guests drew up to his end of the
table, and a lively discourse ensued, in which a casual allusion to
_Punch_ was made. Disraeli profited by this by rising to his feet, and
in a clever and amusing speech proposed the health of Mr. Punch, towards
whom, he protested, he felt no kind of malice on account of any
strictures, pictorial or verbal, which that individual might have passed
upon him. Everybody entered into the spirit of the joke, and after the
toasts had been drunk, calls were made indifferently upon Lemon and a
Beckett, both of whom were present, to