others saw him at that moment, the probability is that he would not
have felt anything like so kindly to me as I did to him.

[Illustration: SKETCHES AT THE LIVERPOOL ELECTION: A WARD MEETING.--SEE
PAGE 138.

_Reduction of Page Design. Brush Drawing on wood, made after election
meeting at night, and despatched to London by early morning train. See
the Confessions of a Special Artist._]

Another instance of a special artist having to depend upon his wits was
when I found myself at a big central manufacturing town, sent down in a
hurry from London by the _Illustrated London News_ to illustrate a most
important election meeting--an election upon which the fate of the
Government of the day depended. When I arrived the mills had been
closed, crowds were in the streets, and it would have been a simple
matter to have got into Mafeking compared with getting into the hall in
which the meeting was at the time being held.

[Illustration: MY EASEL. DRAWING MR. GLADSTONE AT A PUBLIC MEETING.]

If there is one thing I dislike more than another it is a crowd,
particularly an electioneering crowd. Political fever is a bad malady,
even when one is impervious to it, if he has to fight his way through an
infected mob. Quickly slipping round to the principal hotel, and finding
there the carriages engaged for the celebrities of the meeting, I got
into one and was driven rapidly up to the hall, cheered by the mob, who
doubtless looked upon me as some active politician. Had I put my head
out of the window and promised them any absurdity, I believe they would
have chosen me their member on the spot. Arriving at the hall, I was
received by the tipstaffs, who, probably not catching my name
distinctly, thought as the hotel people had done, that I was sent down
in some official capacity, and politely ushered me to the platform,
where I was given a seat in the front row.

Ah, you little know the difficulties of the poor artist in running his
subjects to earth. When in New York I was specially engaged by the _New
York Herald_ to contribute a series of studies of the leading public
men. These were to appear in the Sunday edition.

Those Sunday papers! What gluttons for reading the Americans are! The
first Sabbath morning I was in the States I telephoned in an off-hand
sort of way from my bedroom for "some Sunday papers." I went on
dressing, and somehow forgot my order, but on leaving, or rather
attempting to leave, my room afterwards, I found