Among the useful skits of du Maurier was that upon the conceited young man concealing appalling ignorance with the display of a still more appalling indifference to everything. The drawing among the Print-room series--"_It is always well to be well informed_"--is a good instance. It reveals a ballroom with couples dancing a quadrille. A lady asks her partner: "Who's my sister's partner, vis-à-vis, with the star and riband?" He: "Oh, he--aw--he's Sir Somebody Something, who went somewhere or othaw to look after some scientific fellaw who was murdered, or something, by someone--!" The word _othaw_ in this legend is itself pictorial. Du Maurier was like our own Max Beerbohm in this--his legends and drawings were inseparable. We find he has actually penned in the side margin of the drawing the words "othaw fellaw," we suppose as a possible variant to "scientific fellow," and in the legend the word "other" has been written over with a thickened termination--"_aw._" The usual first trial of the speech in pencil remains but partly obliterated by india-rubber at the top of the drawing. In his series of "Happy Thoughts" du Maurier followed the course of the sort of rapid thought that precedes a tactful reply with real psychological skill. Take, for instance, his drawing of an artist sitting gloomily before his fire, caressed by his wife, who bends over him, saying, "You seem depressed, darling. Have you had a pleasant dinner?" Edwin: "Oh, pretty well; Bosse was in the chair, of course. He praised everybody's work this year except mine." Angelina: "Oh! I'm so glad. _At last_ he is beginning to look upon you as his rival and his _only_ one." The wings of tact are sympathy. This drawing appeared in _Punch_, vol. xcvi. p. 222 (1889); it is signed with other drawings from 89 Porchester Terrace, April '89. Drawings in the Museum collection are signed from "Stanhope Terrace," "Hampstead," "Drumnadrochit," or apparently from wherever the artist happened to be when executing the work. [Illustration] §8