nd Evans--Terms of Settlement--The New Firm--_Punch's_
Special Efforts--Succession of Covers--"Valentines," "Holidays,"
"Records of the Great Exhibition," and "At the Paris Exhibition."

The public reception of the first number of _Punch_ was varied in
character. Mr. Watts, R.A., once told me that the paper was regarded
with but little encouragement by the occupants of an omnibus in which he
was riding, one gentleman, after looking gravely through its pages,
tossing it aside with the remark, "One of those ephemeral things they
bring out; won't last a fortnight!" Dr. Thompson, Master of Trinity,
informed Professor Herkomer that he, too, was riding in an omnibus on
the famous 17th of July, when he bought a copy from a paper-boy, and
began to look at it with curiosity. When he chuckled at the quaint wit
of the thing, "Do you find it amusing, sir?" asked a lady, who was
observing him narrowly. "Oh, yes." "I'm so glad," she replied; "my
husband has been appointed editor; he gets twenty pounds a week!" One
may well wonder who was this sanguine and trustful lady. Mr. Frith
describes how, having overheard Joe Allen tell a friend, in the gallery
of the Society of British Artists, to "look out for our first number; we
shall take the town by storm!" he duly looked out, but was disappointed
at finding nothing in it by Leech; and how when he went to a shop for
the second number, to see if his idol had drawn anything for it, the
newsman replied, "'What paper, sir? Oh, _Punch_! Yes, I took a few of
the first number; but it's no go. You see, they billed it about a good
deal' (how well I recollect that expression!), 'so I wanted to see what
it was like. It won't do; it's no go.'"

The reception by the press was more encouraging--that is to say, by the
provincial press, for the London papers took mighty little notice of the
newcomer. The "Morning Advertiser," it is true, quaintly declared in
praise of the "exquisite woodcuts, serious and comic," that they were
"executed in the first style of art, at a price so low that we really
blush to name it;" while the "Sunday Times" and a number of provincial
papers of some slight account in their day professed astonishment at the
absence of grossness, partisanship, profanity, indelicacy, and malice
from its pages. "It is the first comic we ever saw," said the "Somerset
County Gazette," "which was not vulgar. It will provoke many a hearty
laugh, but never call a blush to the most delicate