A word must be said regarding his feline studies. Cats have been favourite animals with poets and painters: witness Baudelaire, Poe, Coppée, Manet; and Steinlen, too, has found these slender, graceful felines interesting. There is in his representation of this animal a subtle perceiving of the link and of the difference between the brute and the human. It suggests the masters whose paintings of animals have made them famous, Landseer above all. When his book “Le Chat” came out, it was bought at first for children, but could not long be kept in the nurseries. Copies were pilfered for drawing-rooms and studios, where elders claimed these treasures of clever design. Steinlen’s host of drawings are undoubted indications of a power not to be confined in the sphere of the illustration for books. Admirers of Steinlen’s look for great things of him during the next years, claiming that his future is more brilliant in promise than any of his colleagues, Jean Veber excepted. Steinlen himself is a delightful personality, and distinctly a force. The grasp of his hand, the fire of his eye, his courtesy, charm, and the pleasure it is to hear him speak, render him an unusual companion. His friends, naturally, are legion--he is much beloved; but, as they say in France, he is _très sauvage_--preferring to let the world go its ways, and to shut himself away with his work in his remote studio. His intimate contact with the very poor, the very [Illustration: A STEINLEN POSTER] suffering, has formed his points of view and left its mark on his nature. He is a Bohemian, and values slightly luxuries and ways of modern worldly life. He is familiar with the haunts of the thieves in the dangerous parts of Paris: he may well take his life in his hands--he is beloved and known, he is safe. He knows the interiors where starvation and cold and crime are side by side. He has helped generously, who can say how many? directly from his own purse and indirectly through the wide sympathy he has aroused.