COMMUNICATIONS with the SPIRIT OF WASHINGTON for Oracular Revelation of public fact and duty; responses tendered relative to Executive or Governmental, State or Diplomatic, National or Personal questions on affairs of moment for their more ready and appropriate solution, and the special use of official, Congressional and editorial intelligence. Address "Washington Medium," Post Office, Box 628, Washington, D.C. No letter (except for an interview) will be answered unless it encloses one dollar, and only the first five questions of any letter with but one dollar will have a reply. Number your questions and preserve copies of them. Sober and instructed opinion has always shown this distrust, but _Punch_ was not always justified in his treatment of new arts and discoveries. He quite failed to recognize the importance and the possibilities of photography, the early references to which are uniformly disparaging. There was at least this excuse for his want of foresight, that for many years the professional photographer was destitute of any artistic feeling or training save in the purely mechanical side of his calling. In representing him as combining photography with hairdressing or other even more menial trades, _Punch_ was not indulging in exaggeration. The mere name "photographer" called up the image of a seedy, weedy little man who suggested an unsuccessful artist by his dress and whose "studio" was a shabby chamber of theatrical horrors, in which the subject was clamped and screwed into rigidity by instruments of torture. In the 'fifties photography was already exploited as a means of advertising actors, actresses and even popular preachers, but it had not begun to be thought of as a means of social _réclame_. Apart from politicians and public characters little limelight was shed on personality. The relations between the Stage and Society were curiously different from those which prevail to-day. _Punch_ was a great champion of the legitimate drama. Douglas Jerrold had been a prolific and successful, though not prosperous, playwright, and other members of the staff had written for the stage. The disregard of serious native talent by the Court[22] and the fashionable world was a constant theme of bitter comment. But _Punch_ shows no eagerness for the bestowal of official recognition on actors; when the question of knighthoods was mooted, he expressed apprehension lest they should be conferred upon the upholsterers rather than the upholders of the Drama. With that form of mummer-worship which took the form of the publication of personal gossip about actors he had no sympathy, and even satirized it in a burlesque account of the daily life of an imaginary low comedian. On occasions when actors resented the tone of dramatic criticism, as in the quarrel between Charles Mathews and the _Morning Chronicle_, _Punch_ stood for the liberty of the Press. Against sensationalism, horrors, plays based