One boot is successfully removed from commercial number two, and it will evidently not be the fault of the man who is struggling with the other if it does not follow suit. Let the observer note the marked difference in character in all these figures, as well as the skill and truth with which the details in the room are rendered. In 1851 Bloomerism was in full bloom, or rather the attempts of few foolish people to make it prevail amongst us were so persistent as to bring upon them attacks by pen and pencil. As I have already drawn attention to the craze, and to some examples of the way Leech dealt with it, I should have made no further allusion to the subject had I not found in the pages of the _Month_ drawings of such charm that, in justice to the magazine and my readers, I felt I must notice them. First, then, we have a Bloomer whip "tooling" her friends down to the races. If Bloomerism prevailed, this is the sight that Epsom might have seen in the year 1851, to say nothing of equestrian bloomers of whose horsewomanship Leech shows us examples. I think in my last selection from the _Month_ I might claim for myself a position resembling that of the pyrotechnic artist whose display of fireworks culminates in a glorious blaze in the last scene of his entertainment, if I were permitted to introduce it. My firework takes the form of a bouquet of young ladies at some "ancestral home" in the country, who have just received a box of books from London--perhaps from Mudie. What a bevy of beauties!--two of them already absorbed in the last new novel, while another makes off with an armful of treasures. When I say that this drawing--whether we regard it as a composition of figures and of light and shade, or as an example of Leech's supreme power over grace of action and beauty--is worthy of admiration for itself, and of our gratitude to the _Month_ for the opportunity of reproducing it, I fear no contradiction. CHAPTER XII. MR. ADAMS AND LEECH. In the pursuit of material for this memoir, I have had the good fortune to make the acquaintance of one of Leech's earliest and most constant friends, Mr. Charles F. Adams, of Barkway, Hertfordshire. This gentleman is the beau-idéal of a country squire--handsome, hale and hearty, though far past middle age. The letters I am privileged to publish show the terms on which the friends lived, and prove beyond a doubt that many of the hunting scenes which sparkle so brilliantly and so frequently in the pages of "Life and Character" owe their origin to the opportunities afforded to the artist by his friend.