"I see your servants wear cockades now, Miss Shoddson!" "Yes, Pa's just become a member of the Army and Navy Stores." When du Maurier confined himself to observing and to recording he never failed for subjects. But we suppose as a concession to a section of the public he felt a leaven of mere jokes was demanded from him every year. The scene of his struggle to invent those "jokes" is one to be veiled. It is safe to say that it is his distinction to have contributed at once the best satire and the worst jokes that _Punch_ has ever published. A black and white artist has told the writer that the _Art_-Editors of papers look first at the joke. The drawing is accepted or rejected on the joke. We can only be glad that this was not entirely the editorial practice on _Punch_ in du Maurier's time. Perhaps the subjoined "joke" of du Maurier's from _Punch_ is the worst in the world: "I say, cousin Constance, I've found out why you always call your Mamma 'Mater.'" "Why, Guy?" "Because she's always trying to find a mate for you girls." [Illustration: Sketch for illustration for "Wives and Daughters" 1865.] And yet if the drawing accompanying this joke be looked at _first_, it delights with its charm and distinction. Here then is a psychological fact; the drawing itself seems to the eye a poorer affair once the poor joke has been read. Having suffered in this way several times in following with admiration the pencil of du Maurier through the old volumes of _Punch_, we at last hit upon the plan of always covering the joke and enjoying first the picture for its own sake, only uncovering the legend when this has been thoroughly appreciated lest it should turn out to be merely a feeble joke instead of a happily-invented conversation. There are some of the drawings for jokes which we should very much like to have included with our illustrations, but the human mind being so constituted that it goes direct to the legend of an illustration, feeling "sold" if it isn't there, and the "jokes" in some of these instances being so fatal to the understanding of the atmosphere and charm of the drawing, we have had to abandon the idea of doing so. What the reader has to understand is that circumstances harnessed du Maurier to a certain business; he imported all manner of extraneous graces into it, and thus gave a determination to the character of the art of satire which it will never lose. The pages of _Punch_ were enriched, beautified, and made more delicately human. _Punch_ gained everything through the connection and du Maurier a stimulus in the demand for regular work. But it is not impossible to imagine circumstances which, but for this early connection with _Punch_, would have awakened and developed a different and perhaps profounder side of du Maurier, of which we seem to get a glimpse in the illustrations to Meredith in _The Cornhill Magazine_. §8